


Those Who Are at Sea

by leoandlancer



Series: Mermaid AU [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff and Smut, Junkrat's packing explosives, Kidnapping, Lucio thinks they might make it out alive if they don't explode, M/M, Manhandling, Mermaid Roadhog, Rescue, Roadhog is the one sane man, Slow Burn, Treasure Hunting, Treasure Scavenger Junkrat, mermaid au, story fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:26:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9445400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: With the addition of the twelve-foot-long mer-shark called Roadhog to Junkrat and Lucio's treasure-hunting crew, Junkrat makes ambitious plans to dive on even more dangerous waters than he's ever dared before. The greater the risk, the greater the pay off!Before they can brave the depths some people call cursed, strangers come looking for Jamison Fawkes, and they're not leaving empty-handed.Sequel to A Cure For Anything





	1. Lucio

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a quote attributed to Anacharsis, from around 6th Century B.C  
> "There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea."

It was midday, and the sweat dripping off Lucio's face and arms was what finally alerted him to how long he'd been working in the sun. He sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead, discovered that his arm was as sweaty as his face, and groaned, softly but with great feeling. Only when he looked up at the sky did he realized how spectacularly dehydrated he was. The sparse clouds pitched overhead and his world spun briefly. He shut his eyes and shook his head, hard enough to earn an instant headache and feel sweat fly off his chin.

It was the first truly hot day of the summer. The cool mornings of the spring were gone, and the long, baking heat of the summer had arrived and gently slid into all aspects of his life. He was unspeakably grateful that Junkrat was diving again. This time last year, he could visit Junkrat in the air conditioned hospital, and in the years before, they were out on the water most days. He fished his water bottle out from under the shade of one of the saw horses, and downed half of it before he could slow himself down. The shock of the cool water hit his chest like a benediction, almost painful and sharper than love.

He'd been working on restoring a little wooden whaler. The little boat before him was a tender for one of the tall ships that visited regularly and would be spending the summer sailing around Sugar Shell and the nearby islands. As a former deckhand who had sailed for years onboard, and as he was still friendly with the crew, Lucio had happily agreed to take on the restoration. He was almost regretting his generosity. 

The tender had been built poorly, but with the best of intentions years ago. The original planking had gaps you could see daylight through. Lucio had spent a few weeks stripping the hardwood planking off and dragging unsuitable fasteners out of the frames with a pair of vice grips and growing violence. He'd spent much less time replacing the planking and was currently sitting in a nest of pale gold curls of wood shavings. His plane had left a dip in the hollow of his hand from so much use, and the callouses around his palm where red and swollen.

He's been working since dawn, hoping to finish enough to roll the little tender over and start on the inside thwarts. However, he was working on the hot, flat roof of Mei's bakery, and he should have hung the shade sails up days ago. Instead, he'd worked on the hoist they used to get the boat up here, unfolded the old sails they used as canopies to check for mildew or wearing, and then opted to just power through the work instead of ensuring his time here would be comfortable. He was an idiot.

This was something he would have yelled at Junkrat for, if he'd done something this dumb.

He stood, waited for his vertigo to ease, and felt blood return to his feet and calves. Swearing softly under his breath, he vowed for the umptheenth time to never spend an entire morning working on his haunches, meticulously fitting planking and making a nest of pale yellow ringlets of wood. He screwed the blade on his plane back into its handle, shoved it in his pocket, took his water bottle in one hand and his portable speaker in the other. Still blinking into a sun-drunk headache, he shuffled to the edge of the roof and eased himself to sit down on the wide stone ledge, with his feet dangling over the street.

His little portable speaker was still beating out song after song as he sipped his water and tucked the speaker into his pocket. The colourful walls and busy roofs of the town spread around him, and sloped away to the harbour and sharply up behind him towards the hill. Below him, the street was wide enough to allow for two cars to squeeze past each other, though most of the island chose to walk up into the old town rather than try and negotiate the blind corners and foot traffic. It was fairly quiet down there now, most of the island's inhabitants at work or hiding from the heat. A few sunburnt tourists, and the occasional weathered looking mariner on shore leave passed below him.

He finished his water sitting peacefully watching the gulls rise effortlessly over the harbor walls, calling to one another. If he leaned forward slightly and squinted through the sunshine on the water, he could just see the bright teal square of his wharf shack at the end of the harbor with little boat  _ Hylinea  _ tied up below it. 

The sky was almost milk white around the sun, darkening to navy blue at the horizon. The sea was a bright, mutable turquoise banded with white surf. The boats in their moorings, bows turned uniformly to the breeze, bobbed peacefully. A small flotilla of kayakers and SUPs were paddling in around the mouth of the harbour; some tourist expedition returning in time for lunch. The speaker in his pocket beat out the last song on his playlist, and reluctantly, Lucio scootched sideways to get himself over the second floor terrace, and eased himself down over the edge of the roof. The terrace was rampant with plants in pots and milk crates and bins, and Lucio carefully wove through the jungle towards the open window and the cool shade indoors.  

Lucio was climbing in through the window to the guest room off the balcony when he collided with someone climbing out.

"Ah, there you are mate. G'day."

"Oh, hey." Lucio blinked at Junkrat, who blinked back.

They paused, both of them jammed in through the square window, staring at one another. Junkrat managed to hop back first, nimble on his peg leg and pulled Lucio through.

"Just coming to get you, 'Hog's waiting."

"Cool," Lucio looked down to discover he was leaving a trail of pale wood ringlets behind him. "Damn."

Junkrat just snickered at him. "Bit too much sun? Come on, you're dripping."

Which was true, Lucio took the bandana Junkrat pushed into his hands and dragged it over his face as he trailed miserably through Mei's spare bedroom to the landing. As soon as he began climbing down the stairs he could hear the low chatter of the cafe below them.

"Didn't you rig the sails for shade?" Junkrat asked, mock innocent. Junkrat of course, knew Lucio hated wasting time with anything superfluous to the task at hand. Even if it would have allowed him to avoid the risk of heat stroke.

"Yes," Lucio lied, full in the face of both of their knowledge that he'd done nothing of the kind.

Junkrat just snickered. "I thought not, no wonder you look broiled."

Lucio maintained a dignified silence as they came down off the stairs and into Mei's kitchen. He picked wood ringlets from his dreads as they pushed through the saloon doors and arrived behind the counter of the bakery. Mei was at the till, and looked around when they came through to smile at them as they eased past her, and down from behind the counter.

Mei's cafe was a haven in town. Most of the downstairs floor was given up to assorted cozy chairs and tables, the walls crowded with book cases where they weren't simply open to the street. Mei spent half the year traveling, and the other half selling sweets from all over the world. Delicate eclairs and profiteroles were lined up under the glass case next to nanimo bars and date squares, red bean buns and tanghulu sticks.

Lucio grinned and waved at his friends, there were always a few of them in here. Mei was chatting with the family she was serving, nearly all the tables were full, and the high ceilinged stone room was full and lively with chatter. The fans in the ceiling were turning lazily, lights were off and the sunshine on pale stones in the street shone up to the ceilings, dimming and dancing as people passed outside. No one seemed to notice the midday heat, and Mei had started serving snowballs and shaved ice, the true sign of summer here. Lucio was never sure how exactly, but Mei was nearly always surrounded by blocks of ice and bins of snow to sell. He had no idea where she got it from. She had more trouble keeping ice cream then snow and ice.

"Think Roadhog would want a snowball?" Lucio was already tasting the one he was about to order, and getting in line. "I'm calling it, pegging him as a peach... Junkrat?"

Lucio rubbed the bandana over the back of his neck and looked around. Junkrat had vanished, with the quiet, utterly rude way that could only mean trouble. Junkrat was never quiet unless something was wrong. Lucio slowly pulled the bandana down the side of his neck, his back tensing.

"Lucio, are you finished for the day?"

The tourists in front of him had taken their iced coffees and boba tea and gone. Lucio was standing a few feet from the counter, looking around, tense with the knowledge that something was wrong. Something had to be wrong.

"Oh hey, yeah I'm about done in," Lucio stepped up, smiling at Mei despite himself. "Can you get me three snowballs, peach, mango and raspberry, grass jelly, couple of sesame cakes and a Junkrat boba?"

"Sure. Oh and some people were asking after you, insistently," Mei said with such quiet casualness, Lucio immediately felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. She began making the boba, and glanced at a corner of the room, where a few tourists were sitting quietly together. Lucio barely nodded and lounged against the counter, looking over the room at large.

This group of  tourists weren't sunburned, all six of them were sweating while wearing jackets in the heat, and they leant together as they spoke.

"Well, they were looking for Jamison Fawkes," Mei set the clear plastic cup of boba with it's film sealed lid on the counter. She'd written  _ Bully  _ on the top with a sharpie. "But they were interested in you too. Oh and I'm trying a new recipe. I asked Reinhardt and Jack to come over and taste test, and they brought Ana. Zarya’s been helping me too. I'll send some with you ok?"

Lucio suppressed a smile. "Love some thank you. And you know, I can't say I've heard the name Jamison Fawkes," he murmured. 

One member of the little group looked around, and caught Lucio's eye. She had flat grey eyes and a stare to direct to be idle interest or curiosity. With a jolt, Lucio realized she was carrying a pistol under her utterly unseasonable jacket. There was a tattoo on her neck that Lucio recognized, and his heart skipped a beat. She got to her feet and nudged one of her companions, not taking her eyes off him.

And Junkrat would have seen that tattoo first. He could have spotted it at sixty paces in a thick fog even if it had been on the sole of someone's foot probably. He seen it and run and Lucio needed to follow him. Now. Needed to get out of here and find Junkrat and Roadhog and get on  _ Hylinea  _ and start running. The back of his neck was prickling with tension. Projecting a casual, absent minded ease, he switched the song on the speaker in his pocket. The light on the speaker went from yellow to green.

At least one of his friends, one of Mei's helpful taste-testers sitting near Lucio had noticed the change, and frowned curiously at him.

"I'm out of peach, raspberry or mango instead?" Mei said, and Lucio had the excuse he needed to turn away from the room at large and the unblinking stare the women kept on him. She was crossing the room, heading straight for him.

"Two Raspberry’s will be fine," Lucio kept his voice calm, though his heart was pounding, he didn't trust himself to take his hands off the counter, they were probably shaking hard enough to notice from a distance.

"Hey."

"One moment please," Mei said, her gaze sharpening to a cutting glare as she aimed a sweet smile over Lucio's shoulder, "I'll be right with you."

"I'm not ordering. Hey."

A hand closed on Lucio's shoulder, and roughly shoved him around.

He looked up at two people with familiar tattoos and matching sunbleached jackets.

"Yeah, hi," He tipped his head slightly, his voice sounded exactly as he'd intended it to, a little startled but friendly, disarming, "Can I help you?"

For a second, both the woman and her companion looked uneasy, as though they really had been expecting panic.

They were absolutely getting panic but they didn't know that and they weren't going to. Lucio smiled up at them with bland interest and tipped his head a little to one side. They were both over six feet tall.

"You Lucio Santos?" The man snapped.

"We have some..." The woman added and Lucio cut her off sharply.

"Lúcio Correia dos Santos." His full name snapped out with more authority than either of his inquisitors had been expecting. They blinked as he smiled up at them again, "Get it right if you're gonna try and push me around."

"Questions," the woman finished, losing her cooly impassive expression and glaring at him. "Outside," she added with a little snarl.

"No, I'm good here," Lucio replied shortly, still smiling.

"Outside's good for us." The woman reached out and grabbed his arm.

"He said, he's good here," Mei's frigidly cold voice cut over the chatter of the cafe, and silenced it abruptly.

Lucio kept smiling. Everyone in the cafe was staring at the strangers looming over him, and most of the people in the cafe were islanders who knew Lucio, and liked him. At least four of the people sitting here had been brought in by Mei just for this confrontation.

Lucio spoke with enough quiet force to carry, "Get back."

As though compelled, the woman let him go, and both strangers took a step away from him.

"We're looking for Jamison Fawkes," the man scowling down at him, his teeth showed as he spoke.

Lucio shook his head, in an obnoxiously understanding a manner as he thought he could get away with, "Noone in these islands goes by that name. Never heard of it."

"Don't you lie to me," The woman snarled, losing her patience. She stepped back up into Lucio's space and raised her hand again.

There was a movement behind her, so fast that no one could have reacted to it.

She was yanked sharply back and up until her feet left the stone floor. Her partner's hand went inside his jacket and the four by the wall jumped to their feet. Mei's housemate Zarya stood to her full height and rounded on them with a snarl. They froze, suddenly standing unwilling, or unable, to move as she scowled at them with her arms crossed.

In the stunned silence that followed, a little group of tourists that had been sitting at one of the tables quietly left, and two more followed.

"Easy now," Lucio said to the stranger who had his hand inside his sunbleached jacket, frozen while reaching under his left arm. He was staring at the human mountain who had picked his partner up off the ground. "My friend here is perfectly reasonable, to a point."

"Got you," Reinhardt growled affably to the woman dangling from one hand. He had her by the shoulder, and his finger tips were digging in under her collar bone. "Upsetting people, making demands. There is no need for that.”

The woman drew breath, mouth opening in a snarl that showed her teeth, and Reinhardt dropped her without warning. She staggered as she landed, barely staying on her feet and yelping in surprise. She found herself with Mei and Lucio on one side, Reinhardt on the other.

The four other strangers at the wall started towards them and stopped short when Zarya shook her head. When someone as authoritatively built as Zarya shakes her head, it’s indisputable.

"You're looking for someone, that's fine," Lucio said with quiet politeness, "But keep looking, I don't know a Jamison Fawkes. No one has that name on the island."

"We'll just go then," the woman growled, massaging her shoulder and glaring from Reinhardt to Lucio. She and her partner were standing back to back, though Lucio didn't think they'd realized they'd moved into a defencive formation.

A few of the cafe's regulars nodded amiably to Mei as they left, knowing a good time to leave when they saw it. The last two tourists left after them and Mei's bakery was empty save for twelve people on opposite ends of a disagreement.

"No," Reinhardt said quietly, a slow smiled spreading over his scarred face. "Stay. You're  _ welcome  _ to join my friend and I."

"No," The man snapped, "we're leaving."

"Join us," Zarya said, and grinned at the four by the wall with a hard, cold stare. They had were already pinned against the bookcases in the corner and had nowhere to back up to, though Lucio saw a few of them trying. "Stay where we can keep an eye on you. Island can be dangerous for newcomers."

"I'd stay, if I were you," Jack  Morrison, sitting with Ana Amari at a table by the door, stretched his legs out and crossing his ankles. "They say it's not safe, I'd believe them."

"Usually only to outsiders," Ana added, she set her teacup into its saucer and looked at the two pinned between Reinhardt and Lucio with one bright golden eye. "But we will keep you safe here."

"Your order," Mei said, pushing a brown paper bag over the counter to Lucio. "And I filled up your water bottle, you look like you need it. I'll put it all on your tab. Have a nice day."

"Thanks!" Lucio took the bag, and tried to ignore the two closest to him glaring at him in outraged confusion, "Reinhardt, Zarya," he nodded to the combined five hundred and eighty pounds of extremely protective and friendly muscle flexing meaningfully at the tattooed strangers. "Ana, Jack." He stepped politely over Jack's outstretched legs as he went out the door.

"Have a good afternoon, dear," Ana nodded to him, and almost absently held a couple of strawberry candies out to him. She didn't take her single hawkish eye off the two strangers who had questioned him.

He accepted the candy without breaking stride and murmuring his thanks. Then he ducked out of the door and the heat of the day fell over the back of his neck like yoke. He could hear Reinhardt informing the strangers they were going to sit quietly and enjoy a nice game of cards. Perhaps some chess.

Lucio ran. He knew the streets, even without his skates he was fast here, and he took a long, circuitous route down the hill, watching for anyone who could be following him, anyone with an unseasonal jacket and that familiar tattoo. No one was watching him in particular however, and Lucio reached the marina on the south side of the island without issue and only twenty minutes late.

He called his hellos to the marina master as he hurried down the wharf and unlocked the gate to the private finger docks. He let out a breath as the gate locked behind him, and trotted down the ramp to the finger docks and the neat rows of boats tied up in their slips. Mostly islander's boats were tied up here, with the several other docks given up to the numerous and constantly rotating visiting yachts. Lucio dropped down to the floating docks, turned, crouched, and cocked his head to look back under the finger docks. He buttoned his pockets shut, held the brown paper bag’s folded top between his teeth, and ducked and twisted to grab the rail on the underside of the finger dock. Briefly, he hung upside down under the docks, then started climbing back towards the wharf.

It would be easier to swim, he knew from experience, but the challenge was fun. Years ago, he and Junkrat had installed a series of rails and handholds on the underside of the marina's spreading dock system. They were invaluable for crossing the marina under cover. At low tide, you could swing under them like monkey bars, at high tide, there was a little more than two feet between the water and the rails. Lucio was trying, with difficulty, not to imagine some inquisitive or hungry form of sea life surfacing in the dark water, just under his back.

"Want me to take that?"

Lucio started as something huge noiselessly broke the water under him. Then grunted in agreement and turned his head to let a huge hand delicately take the brown bag from his clenched teeth.

"Thanks Roadie," Lucio said. Sometimes inquisitive and hungry sea life surfacing under you were actually very helpful. The twelve foot long, half giant, half bull shark monster they had somehow befriended months ago was unquestionably very helpful. If habitually, and apparently unconsciously, terrifying.

"You made it, were they Junkers?" Junkrat's voice was a little strained, somewhere in the dimness ahead of him. "They looked like Junkers. Had that tattoo..."

Lucio let his head tip back now that he wasn't carrying their afternoon snacks and nodded grimly upside down at Junkrat as he closed the distance to their work raft. Roadhog was swimming slowly under him, the lunch bag held out of the water.

Back when they had just been getting started treasure hunting, Lucio had moved his work raft to the marina, and the harbour master had had no problem with him storing it under the permanent structure of the wharf. Lucio and Junkrat had carefully paddled the old raft in between and under the finger docks, and chained it in place to make a hiding place that was endlessly useful.

Junkrat was on his feet, skittering from one side of the raft to the other. "Didn't like leaving you there mate, but I thought it might be worse to stay, saw some of the others there, you alright? They didn't try anything did they?"

Lucio reached the end of the finger docks. Above him, the ramp up to the wharf sloped up, and the underside of the wharf was a good ten feet above the raft chained just ahead of him. He carefully turned around, got his feet on the raft and then had the tricky part of having to shift his weight onto it without shoving it away. The chains holding it in place necessarily had some give to them to allow for the tides. In order not to crash into the water in this, the last moment before safety, Lucio had to time the shift in his weight perfectly, not shoving away, but pushing down and pulling his upper body forward...

Roadhog derailed his complex physics calculations by the simply expedient of putting one hand at Lucio's back and shoving him gently up and towards the raft. Lucio blinked as he found himself standing before Junkrat. Roadhog put the brown bag, with Lucio's damp bite marks on the fold, beside him.

"What's going on?" Roadhog asked shortly. “He’s been like this since he got here.”

There was a wet mark on the worn wood where he'd had his arms folded at the edge of the raft. He reclaimed the same spot, looking up at them from behind his shark skin mask. Even with only his shoulders and chest out of the water, he was almost as tall as they were, and the anchor Lucio could hardly lift was beside him. Roadhog could toss that anchor twenty metres if he wanted to hurt something on the other end of that throw. He was easily strong enough to break bones. He'd killed the shark whose skin he wore with his bare hands.

Lucio sat down beside him, pulled his deck shoes off and dropped his feet into the water next to Roadhog. Junkrat dropped down onto his side next to him instantly.

"Junkers," Lucio said, tapping his throat where they'd all carried the tattoo. "Same tattoo. Six of them asking for Jamison Fawkes. Insistently. Asked me to come outside."

Junkrat hissed and Lucio began unpacking the carepackage Mei had packed for him. Whatever she put on his tab, she never failed to give him a little extra.

"Reinhardt and Zarya were there. So was Jack and Ana, not to mention Mei," Lucio passed Junkrat his Boba. "Got you raspberry snow, bit melty." He said, and put the little sealed cup with it's sweet red snowball inside.

"Thanks," Roadhog grunted, carefully pulling the top off the clear container and accepting the spoon Lucio handed him with a nod.

For someone who was pushing a half ton, Roadhog could move with surprising and gratifying care and delicacy. Lucio watched him start on his snowball, holding his spoon with his pinky out.

"Junkers was the gang I ran with," Junkrat said shortly. "Before I came here. I found some treasure in their territory and didn't share. I left them after they… When I could."

Lucio wasn't looking, but he heard the sound of Junkrat's peg leg scratching on the rough wood of the raft. He chewed a bite of his date square without speaking. He couldn’t have added much. This was almost entirely Junkrat's story. Almost.

Roadhog growled low in his chest, and Lucio could feel the vibrations on his skin. The hair on the back of his neck went up again.

"Was before your time mate," Junkrat said with a laugh that sounded a little startled. "Not much you could have done. Nah, I got out ok. Better than the alternative. But they've not forgotten about me."

"Might have to pay them off," Lucio said, and grinned as Junkrat and Roadhog both looked at him with mingled disgust and censure. "They were armed. Not graceful about it either."

"You left these people? In public? With your friends?" Roadhog paused, and in the dark water under the wharf, about eight feet of wide, powerful shark tail fanned the water beside Lucio's legs.

Despite himself, Lucio felt his gut go cold. Roadhog was a predator and in the few months they'd been working together, Lucio had noted and appreciated every courtesy and all the gentle manners Roadhog had unfailingly shown them. He was their friend, and had been kind to Lucio. But Lucio had excellent survival instincts. Everything about Roadhog set them off.

"They'll be fine," Junkrat waved the comment off, grinning at the  _ Bully  _ sharpied on top of his boba and chewing about seven tapioca pearls at once, "Ana'll keep Reinhardt and Zarya from doing too much damage, or anything illegal."

"As the mother of the chief of security on the island, that shouldn't be hard," Lucio muttered.

"S'what I said." Junkrat went on breezily, then switched topics, "You really think I should pay?"

"Depends entirely if you'd rather kill them," Lucio frowned at his date square. They often had to deal with people who wanted a share of the treasure Junkrat seemed to be able to find by some unnerving divination. But they rarely had to deal with people who had worked with Junkrat before, were armed, and who  _ wanted  _ Junkrat dead.

"I would." Junkrat said succinctly. He was chewing on his snowball, not bothering with a spoon.

"The chief of security on the island may take issue with that. And her mother gave me a sweet to give you," Lucio passed Junkrat one of the strawberry candies. "And you Roadhog," he passed the second one, and unwrapped the third for himself. Of course she'd given him three. She'd never met Roadhog, hadn't, to Lucio's knowledge ever seen him, but of course she knew they had a third partner now.

"Ah well, can't let granny down," Junkrat said briskly and popped the candy in his mouth with the last of the snow. He instantly bit through it with a noise like cracking bone. He crunched in comparative silence for a while while Roadhog drank the last of the melted snow with his head back and his mask pushed up, and Lucio sucked his strawberry candy, kicking his feet slowly back and forth in the water.

It was cool under the wharf, with the sun coming down in narrow, uneven bars on the raft and the water, and reflecting back up to the underside of the wharf in wavy dancing lines. When low tide came at midday, the light poured down and Lucio could lie on his belly on the raft and see all the way to the rocky bottom. He could count every single one of the tools, rolls of twine, wire, paintbrushes and cellphones that generations of marina patrons had lost. There had been at least seven wrenches, vice grips and marlin spikes that Lucio had lost since he'd been a child. Roadhog had obligingly fetched them for him the first time they'd come to meet here.

"If we can deal, I'll pay them," Junkrat said at length, grudgingly.

Lucio let a breath out, and Roadhog cocked his head.

"If?" Lucio asked, and Roadhog grunted, apparently he'd caught that conditional too.

"If." Junkrat said, with a little more emphasis. He'd finished his boba and his snowball and his mouth was red from the candy. Idly, he picked up one of Roadhog's hands and started studying it, tracing the lines on the palm with the thumb of his left hand.

Lucio wondered if palmistry for merfolk differed significantly from the land based practice, and switched the candy from left cheek to right. He'd never been able to find these candies in any shop, but Ana never seemed to run out of them.

"You still want to dive on Misreported?" Lucio said after a few quiet minutes. He'd closed his eyes and was leaning back on his hands, flat on the raft behind him, savoring the cool of the still, humid air around him, and clean, cool movement of the water on his legs.

"Still a bad idea," Roadhog said with flat conviction.

Lucio opened his eyes and looked at him. He had the sharkskin mask pushed back enough to just barely cover his eyes, and he was watching Junkrat. Junkrat was still holding Roadhog's hand in both of his, looking at the scars on the back, the ring, with the same sleepy curiosity. Lucio's entire hand could splay flat and wide against the inside of Roadhog's palm. If Roadhog ever had a need for mittens, they'd be about a sextuple-xl.

"You're the one that said there was good diving there," Junkrat replied, "The very best, as you said."

"Which has a lot to do with all the other divers and treasure hunters dying in their attempts," Roadhog rumbled. "I've told you before. If Misreported wakes up, you'll be in trouble."

"You're here, you can prevent trouble from happening to us," Junkrat grinned, his eyes flicking up from Roadhog's hand to his face. His hands went still over Roadhog's. "And Lucio can get us out, eh mate?"

"If we go quietly," Lucio lay back on the raft, lacing his fingers together over his stomach and trying to look less stressed than he actually was. "Misreported won't even need to wake up for us."

"Disappointing lack of excitement," Junkrat muttered.

"Hey, we don't always need explosives," Lucio kept his elbow on the raft but tipped his hand over to tap his his fist to Junkrat's head.

"Well I know that's a lie," Junkrat sighed.

"Misreported might not even be there," Lucio said hopefully.

"It's there," Roadhog growled.

"Ok but when was the last time it actually took a ship?" Lucio was gamely trying to consider this dive Junkrat had his heart set on anything but a disaster. "Ten years ago? Twenty?"

"Last month," Roadhog grunted.

"Back up explosives," Junkrat muttered, as though to himself.

Lucio sighed and opened his eyes, looking up at the wide boards of the wharf and the lines of hot, bright sunshine between them through the spider webs. "I am just trying to look on the brightside."

"Heaps of treasure from generations of sunken ships is the bright side."

"And planes," Roadhog added, "There's a few planes."

"Misreported took out planes?!" Lucio sat up abruptly, rigid with tension again.

"A few," Roadhog repeated, the shark mask swung from Junkrat to Lucio, "It's never taken anything as small as  _ Hylinea _ ." He tipped his head a little to one side, even with only his human half out of the water, and leaning up the foot or so from the water to the top of the raft, he was almost as tall as Lucio was sitting. Junkrat was still idly holding one of his hands, but Roadhog gently butted the back of the other against Lucio's thigh.

"Reassuring," Lucio said, feeling more assured by the brute size of Roadhog than the previous proclivities of Misreported. Having Roadhog on your side was a deeply reassuring thing to know about your chances.  

"We'll go quietly," Junkrat agreed, still looking at Roadhog's palm with a thoughtful little frown. "Tomorrow."

"Nope. Next week," Lucio said firmly, "There's a swell on and fifty knots winds."

"Ten, twelve foot swells," Roadhog grunted, backing Lucio up like a good'un.

"Oh. Stuff that then." Junkrat instantly changed plans. "Next week, you're right, let's go next week. Tomorrow seems like a great day to not do that. Beach. Tomorrow seems like a good day to do beach."

"Beach," Lucio said idly. He thought of the heat on the roof of Mei's bakery and another day kneeling in wood shavings. The heel of his right hand was aching and there was a bruise coming in from using his plane too much. He smiled, "Yeah, let's do beach instead. Sugar Shell's packed these days, but we can go to Emris Island, no one brings tourists there."

"Sure," Junkrat's left hand was motionless, holding Roadhog's, "Meet up at Emris after breakfast?"

"I'll come to  _ Hylinea _ ," Roadhog said in his low voice.

"Junkrat, want to grab a basket to bring?"

"Sure, you keep insisting Mei doesn't hate me anymore," Junkrat slipped his hand from Roadhogs and stretched.

"She doesn't, she just knows you're a bully," Lucio reluctantly pulled his feet out of the water, put his shoes on his soaking wet feet and started packing their garbage into the brown bag.

"That was years ago," Junkrat muttered, "I'm swimming out, I can take that."

"She's got a good memory," Lucio passed Junkrat the paper bag, grinning.

"So do I," Junkrat indignantly sat down on the edge of the raft, turned and slid sideways and down and into the water,  the hand with the bag anchoring him to the raft. "As I recall she hit me so hard I was kissing the dirt for about five minutes before I came around."

Roadhog was enjoying himself, Lucio could just see the edge of a smirk under the shadow of the mask.

"More like ten," Lucio grinned, and carefully leaned over and under until he could reach the first rail on the underside of the finger docks. The raft moved away, irritatingly predictable and unwelcome, stretching him out uncomfortably over dark water.

Roadhog shifted, reaching up so Lucio could step briefly into his hand as he transferred his weight to the rails. Then he lay back in the water, belly up, anchor in one hand, and held his other arm out to Junkrat.

"Think she'd let it go then," Junkrat muttered and reached out, draping himself over Roadhog's arm and shoulder and holding the brown bag out of the water. Without his fins, he wouldn't last long in the water alone, but it was faster and safer for Roadhog to tow him out then climbing.

Lucio started climbing towards the gap between the flat calm water of the marina and the dark edge of the dock above him. The sun was blazing down on the water, and after spending some time in the dim shade on the raft, the gap looked like a fat bar of brilliant white and blue. Heat from the sunshine out there was radiating on his face when he looked at it.

Roadhog swam on his back, keeping pace with Lucio and staying under him. Junkrat hung easily off Roadhog's arm, one hand out of the water with their bag, his foot and peg leg trailing along side Roadhog's tail. Once they reached the floating docks, Roadhog stayed close until Lucio had managed to climb down from the rails and back out into the sunshine on the floating docks.

Once he was out from the shade, Lucio shut his eyes and sat with his legs splayed before him on the dock, feeling the heat draping over the back of his neck and shoulders in a heavy, familiar mantel. Roadhog boosted Junkrat out of the water and he came out skinny and soaking, the authentic drowned rat look. He shook himself, and Lucio turned his face into the flying onslaught of cold salt water, almost wishing he'd let Roadhog tow him along too.

"See you tomorrow," Roadhog was keeping low in the water. The occasional yacht or passing work boat could glance under the finger docks and see him if they looked at the right time, and no one wanted to notice a mer-shark. Least of all Lucio, Junkrat or Roadhog just now.

"Sure, I'll wait for you on  _ Hylinea _ ," Lucio cracked one eye open in the brilliant sunshine and cocked a smile at Roadhog, then glanced up, "Junkrat I'll come to town wharf to get you? Roadhog can hop off if there's any folks around. And it's closer than you heading to Mei's then back to my place."

"Sure," Junkrat nodded easily, then squinted and blinked around the brilliant sunshine before dropping down to crouch. His wet hair was a wild, soaking, tangled mess around his head, sticking up at odd angles. The water on the back of his neck was already drying. 

"Beach," He muttered, apparently reminding himself why he'd moved to the hottest possible place on earth where summertime sunshine brought only suffering.

"Beach," Roadhog agreed, he nodded to Lucio and pulled his shark's mask back down over his face.

Then, moving fast, Roadhog reached up and scuffed one hand up and over Junkrat's head, petting his wet hair back from his face.

Lucio suppressed a smile as Junkrat sat down abruptly in mute astonishment and turned red. Lucio couldn't possibly count the number of times that Junkrat casually touched Roadhog in a day, even when they weren't working together, especially when he didn't have to. Junkrat seemed endlessly fascinated by every part of Roadhog, unable to keep himself away. He had to touch. Like it was part of what grounded him, reminded him Roadhog really was here with him.

Roadhog never really encouraged it, but never, ever seemed to mind either. Certainly never seemed to refuse Junkrat, or question him. He moved willingly when Junkrat touched him.

"Stay out of trouble," Roadhog growled at Junkrat. He kept his hand on the side of Junkrat's head.

Lucio could count on one hand the number of times Roadhog touched Junkrat though.

"See you tomorrow big guy," Lucio said smiling, Roadhog nodded again, pulled his hand back and dropped below the water's surface. His fin knifed briefly through the water, then he dove.

Lucio watched Junkrat turning steadily more red, and breaking into one of his wide, genuine grins. "You going to be ok?"

"What," Junkrat blinked at Lucio, and fought to keep his grin to something approaching normal. "What, I-I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh huh," Lucio blinked in the sunshine and climbed to his feet. "Come on, I'll walk home with you, need my good headphones you borrowed."

"Sure, you look into Mei's on your way home and make the order for the basket tomorrow? Let her know I'll pick it up?" Junkrat started up the ramp up onto the finger docs, back towards the wharf. "And let me know tomorrow how it went with the Junkers? I'm assuming some made it out alive."

"Assuming," Lucio agreed, following Junkrat.

They paused and sorted their trash at the marina, tipping the sticky plastic into one bin and paper and wrappers into the other. They climbed up the hewn rock steps to the shore and through the wide open gates of the marina and headed uphill towards town.

The town was lively now, the shop doors wide open, people mingling in the seating that spilled out to the streets. The high, brightly painted walls reached above them, the big casement windows on the upper floors wide open. Music came trailing down in places where people practiced their guitar or piano, sitting inside in the shade in the gap between the hottest part of the day, and the busy time before supper.

They left the part of town navigable by car, and began climbing up streets made of stairways, where the houses were built up the side of the hill, making narrow homes with huge top floors and tiny basements. The streets between the houses were narrow, crowded with plants that kept the paths cool, and worn smooth from decades of channeled wind and pouring rains. The colours on the walls up on the hill were bright pinks and oranges, colours that didn't bleach as easily as the darker ones. You could navigate the town based on the colours of the houses. Darker colours on the walls and buildings facing north, pale or white houses on the south side.

Junkrat's house was on the crest of the hill. It was squat and orange, with a low door you stepped down into, more like a bunker then anything from one side. On the other side, it was an long shingled castle that clung to the steepest part of the hill, where it was nearly a cliff.  The top floor was the largest, and each floor below it, progressively smaller as the hill sloped into it. It was far more space then Junkrat needed, but Lucio expected that he enjoyed the privacy.

Usually, there was privacy up here, which was rare on an island as habitually full of tourists as Sugar Shell was. Any tourists that made the long climb up here usually went to the look-out to the west. There had been a church at the top of the hill here, some kind of convent once, but it, like most of the homes that had been here, had been torn down before Lucio was born. Which was perfectly understandable, since most people preferred to live without a three and half minute climb (Lucio had timed it in a fit of pique) up stone stairs. Usually, Junkrat enjoyed a fairly quiet existence up here. There were gardens, flourishing rhododendrons and wild running creepers and feral flowers, a fountain that still played in the winter and a platoon of stray cats. Junkrat spoiled them, and they lay fat and smiling in the sunshine next to bowls of food he'd leave out. Junkrat liked it up here. He liked a vantage point.

Lucio was still panting and sweating slightly from the climb up the hill when they came around the corner of the old church wall and Junkrat grabbed his elbow, hard. Lucio looked up from the street in surprise.

There were three strangers waiting on the low stone wall around the front of Junkrat’s cottage.

"Diving early on Misreported mate, tomorrow." Junkrat said idly, in calm, perfectly disinterested voice. From a distance, the hand gripping Lucio's arm hard enough to leave a bruise might have just looked like helping a friend after the climb. From a distance, the strangers wouldn't be able to see Junkrat shaking.

"You could deal," Lucio suggested, feeling his heart nearly stop, but Junkrat hadn't broken stride so Lucio wouldn't either.

"Nah, they're still here after talking with Reinhardt, Zarya, Mei, Jack, Ana and you. If they'd settle for a deal, they'd have left already. They're not here to deal."

"How much will they want?" Lucio asked quietly. One of the strangers had a black eye, and the other two had split lip and a broken nose, respectively. None of them looked particularly prepared to settle for anything less then violence.

"Everything," Junkrat whispered.

Lucio realized, very suddenly, that three more people were behind them. Three more Junkers in unseasonal jackets to cover what could only be illegal ordinance had dropped casually into step behind them. Lucio swallowed, his heartbeat felt hot in his throat, too big for his chest. Junkrat's hand was shaking harder.

"Diving on Misreported. Tomorrow." Lucio's voice dropped only slightly.

"Ta," Junkrat nodded.

The three strangers ahead of them were on their feet, watching Junkrat, eyeing Lucio up and scowling. They were closer now, and Lucio could see the one with the black eye had a bloody ear too. All three had blood on their shirts. The three walking behind them were gaining, walking faster, their shadows stretching past Lucio and Junkrat's feet.

"Take off," Junkrat breathed. "Got no leverage at all if they get you too."

"You sure?" Lucio glanced up at Junkrat who looked... Drawn out somehow, excited in a way that Lucio only saw when Junkrat was about to press to detonate. About to hear the boom. He was sure. He didn't usually look angry when he got like this. The anger was new, and it told Lucio, quite plainly, that Lucio avoiding capture by the Junkers wasn't just about leverage. It was about avoiding collateral damage.

Junkrat wasn't shaking out of fear. He wasn't holding on to Lucio for the reassurance.

"Take off," Junkrat growled again.

"Sure," Lucio murmured. "We'll come get you, ok? We'll be there."

The path had a crumbling stone wall on one side, covered in ivy and with the long, trailing branches of an outgrown rhododendron leaning over it. The other side was a rail, roped in morning glories, and a drop on the other side down the sheer hillside. Down a crowded, staggered slope of houses and colourful walls and rooftop gardens and laundry lines. Down a three and a half minute climb up a switchback staircase to climb.

"Thanks mate," Junkrat murmured, he eased his grip on Lucio’s arm, and let go.

Lucio, moving with assurance and no hesitation, turned without preamble, and hurled himself over the rail.

There was a shout behind and above him, shock and maybe anger, maybe horror. Maybe the six Junkers with the blood on their shirts and the tattoo's on their throats weren't expecting to see Lucio die by falling. They weren't going to. This way was always faster to get down from Junkrat's cottage. And Lucio knew this way by heart. He skimmed and slid and flew from one bright wall to the next, down the edges of roofs and along terraces and jumped between buildings over the streets below him. He could have done this in the dark, he didn't even need his skates for this.

He hit the hot stone of the streets where the slope evened out in a long slide, and started running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed so far! Next chapter will be posted Feb 6, and the ending chapter on Feb 20.  
> This story is actually very close to home with the unfortunate distinction that my home is a little colder and so far I haven't seen a single mermaid. If you have any questions, please let me know!  
> Thank you to Daishar, who first read this, and Windlion, who helped me finish! <3  
> This chapter is unbeta'd so all the horribly embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes are mine, and I apologize.


	2. Junkrat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey some sweet sweet art of this chapter is over here by [moriarty-is-back on Tumblr](http://moriarty-i-s-back.tumblr.com/post/158031568908/a-quick-sketch-for-one-of-my-new-favorite-fanfics)! Go see it's adorable!

"Where'd you hide it."

Junkrat opened his eyes, which was a nice surprise. He hadn't really expected them to kill him but you could never be sure.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

The six Junkers had moved fast after Lucio had gone over the rail. Robbed so suddenly of two captives, of someone who could put leverage on Junkrat, they'd made sure he couldn't follow. They needn't have worried, Junkrat had nowhere else he'd rather be right now. His ribs ached and his breath came rough and there was blood on his mouth, between his teeth. His nose was still bleeding and blood was drying on his cheek.

They would have absolutely kept beating him if he'd put up any resistance at all. But he hadn't, and Junkers got bored easily. Junkrat had only marginally more patience than they did, but it was enough. He had something better then getting a sucker punch in.

"Come on Jamison. We tracked you thousands of miles over difficult country and you killed seven of us to keep a secret. Tell me where the fuck you hid it. It ain't here."

Junkrat slowly dragged himself upright. At times like these, his right hand felt like it was being crushed in a vice. His right leg felt like someone was driving a spike through his calf with slow, vicious patience. Which was furiously unfair because when you don't have a limb, it shouldn't be able to cause you pain. He stared at the scratched, salt crusted metal palm of his right hand. He could feel a vice crushing his hand as he flexed the fingers, stiff from salt water, but exorbitantly painful. Things he didn't have anymore shouldn't hurt him.

"No secret mate. Just treasure. And it's long gone." Junkrat sat up at last, aching in every muscle, especially the phantom ones. The pain should have made him angry, surly at the very least. All he felt was a low, sullen burn of frustration and exhaustion.

His cottage had been torn apart.

He liked this place. It was the first place he'd ever lived that had been his. Somewhere that had a lock on the door and only he had a key to. He was one of the few people on the island that actually locked their doors, and Lucio knew it, but never commented on that habit. Just accepted that every time Junkrat locked his door, he smiled. Over a year ago, he'd been in the hospital and recovering from the loss of his arm, and a surprising and touching number of people had come to visit him, bring him flowers and plants and little pretty things to keep in around his bed while he recovered. He'd kept the plants, and Lucio had helped him set them up by the huge southeast facing windows. They'd hung in nets and harnesses Lucio had made for him, using some sailor's witchcraft to make slings and cradles out of braided ganglion and tarred marlon.

Most of the furniture was over a hundred years old, and had been inherited when he'd bought the house, since a hundred years ago was about the time people decided that carrying anything up this hill was for chumps. Everything was, therefore, built to last, and had stood decades as the cottage changed hands. The furniture was scuffed up, the edges and corners worn down, the wood at the handles of the chairs shiny with patina, and the tables scored and spattered with long lost art projects, writing ink, burn marks from cigars and candles, rings from glasses left too long in a pool of their own condensation. The fabric over the chairs and the long, uncomfortable couch had faded to milky white, with odd, darker patches where throw pillows or a blanket had hidden it from the sun. He'd kept fruit in nets Lucio had made for him hanging in the little kitchen he kept. He would, if left to his own devices, live on fresh fruit, which he still considered a major delicacy.

The Junkers had come looking for him here first. Had broken the door open and torn the lock out of the door frame when he was still talking with Roadhog and Lucio down at the Marina. They'd torn the place apart when they didn't find him. Shattered clay pots with dying plants lay trampled in scattered dirt and torn, faded fabric and ancient, long squashed stuffing and horse hair. The harvest table that must have been built into Junkrat's cottage had been split in two, the decades year old scratch marks on the bottom by some procrastinating child lost. The couch had been slashed open and ripped apart. His desk had been torn open, the drawers smashed on the floor, and the pigeon holes snapped out. Pages and pages of careful, meticulous maps, drawings, designs, plans and ideas was scattered, unreadable under muddy boot prints or torn deliberately from his sketch books. They'd dragged every scrap of food out of his cold store, left the ice block broken and melting on the clay tiles amid the wreckage of last night's left overs and pulverised bananas and mangos.

The oranges had apparently given them some trouble. It's hard to crush an orange, surprisingly so. There was a whole one that had rolled into hiding under the broken couch. Junkrat had noticed it when he was on the floor receiving a a kick in the gut. He’d felt some fellow feeling for that orange as he passed out the first time.

"If it's gone, why you still hiding?"

Six junkers. Six dusty, sun bleached, wild eyed orphans circling the drain of humanity. Junkrat had been part of them, lived and breathed and shared their food. They'd forced their way into his home and broken it to pieces. They'd scared Lucio. They weren't going to stop.

Which was fine. People this hungry are easy to lead.

"Thought you said I killed some Junkers," Junkrat cocked his head and looked up at the man, not their leader, because they didn't have those. He had yellow hair going white at the tips from the sun. Junkrat recognized him, vaguely, from six or seven years ago. One of those dusty, wild-eyed faces in the firelight in a place far away, red and hot and dusty. Someone else who looked just like Junkrat had. "So do you think I'm hiding over something worth killing eight dead people, or over eight dead junkers?"

They would absolutely be here over the supposed treasure. The Junkers were a practical people, they had absolutely no use for their dead.

"The treasure you took from the opal mine, belongs to us, you found it on our territory."

"It's gone," Junkrat snarled, losing his tenuous patience when his prediction came unfailingly true. "S'what happens to treasure isn't it. Anything of value. It goes away."

"That why you're living so nice here?" The Junker who'd been talking through a split lip stood over Junkrat with his arms spread wide. Junkrat's cottage was dimming, the sun was setting and the southeast sky out the broken windows behind them was pale purple, with navy blue clouds edged in the last of the sun's gold. The low, warm, open room was a shattered mess. He had been living nice here. Before these fuckers arrived.

"You know, unlike most Junkers, I don't find one nice thing and stop looking," Junkrat fought to keep his temper down. Fought to think. He'd had a plan, a bare frame of one when he'd told Lucio to take off. The wild strike of inspiration that came from the same part of him that had learned to kill when he was still a teenager. He had no help here. He had to get to where Lucio could help him, had to get to where Roadhog could get to him. Had to get them somewhere they'd die terrified.

He had to get them out onto the water.

"I find a lot of nice things," Junkrat said through his teeth.

"Folks said you found better then opals in that mine."

Stubbornly focused on that stupid treasure, this one. That stupid find Junkrat had made that killed eight Junkers in a night and sent nineteen year old Jamison Fawkes along into the darkness to die.

Junkrat had a knack for finding things of value. It was a shame that not everything of value should be found. Lucio thought it was supernatural, but it just made sense. He'd gone to a opal mine with a team to find a cache of opals. Then realized when he arrived that a working opal mine didn't get shut down for anything less than a mandate from high up. It didn't get turned into a hiding place for a cache of gemstones because the working worth of the mines was far greater. Young Jamison had seen all that, and knew it meant there was more. Something of value that the mine could hide that somewhere more official, more guarded, more public wouldn't be suitable for. Jamison had had the skills and cunning to see all that. He'd been good enough to find what had actually been hidden there.

Junkrat hissed another breath through his teeth, still furious at his nineteen year old self. He was on his knees on the warm cracked clay tiles of his shattered cottage with it's smashed windows and the door hanging by one hinge with a broken lock. There were six people around him with tattoos on their throats and bloody knuckles and split lips. Junkrat had blood in his mouth and blood drying on his cheek, his ribs were aching and there was a bruise on his neck. Junkrat was still paying for Jamison Fawkes' intuition six years later.

"Folks died looking for it," Junkrat broke into a little laugh, despite himself.  "Didn't bring them much in the way of fortune."

"Enough," snarled a woman, she'd been stalking around Junkrat's apartment, picking through the mess as though looking for something. "Whatever it was. You stole it from us, all of us. A Junker found it and you took it. You're not giving us answers, so you're going to have to pay recompense."

Not for the dead junkers, he noticed. "Sure," Junkrat said amiably. "Recompense, for a treasure you don't know for sure existed. Possibly found on your territory, the boundaries which were never ever laid out. And found by a-"

The kick caught him on his side, under his ribs and knocked him down hard. He curled up, rolling to try and cover himself, trying to draw breath.

"Find some scrap of self-preservation and say yes, you're going to pay us for what you stole."

Junkrat hissed out the first painful breath he'd managed to draw. They wore steel toed boots and came from a place where people killed each other with their hands if they needed to.

"How much then," Junkrat choked out, the kick had driven up under his ribs and he could hardly breath. "If you want to be litigious about it."

There was a pause while some members of the Junkers wondered what litigious meant and at least one person was coming up with a number.

They named the figure, in the round, over confident way of someone who's thought of the largest amount money six people can physically carry, then adding quarterly interest of 24.8% for six years.

Junkrat laughed. It was breathless, and it hurt, but he couldn't help it.

"You going to pay us?" One of the Junkers snarled, losing their patience entirely. "Or are we going to have to track down your little friend again and beat our money out of them instead?"

The laugh died in Junkrat's throat. "Misreported," he snapped abruptly. He ribs felt like a cage keeping the pain in.

"What are you talking about."

"Misreported Basin," Junkrat snarled out. He'd thought about taking them to the skerries or the island before he dove on Misreported but the threat on Lucio was what was going to kill them. "It's a basin out on the banks by an island. Decades of wrecks down there, just need to shift the seafloor a little. Your money's down there."

"What island?" Two of the Junkers were standing by a huge, exorbitantly detailed chart that ran floor to ceiling for several feet along one wall.

It was of Sugar Shell islands, the surrounding waters, shoals, the southern stretch of banks and the shipping channels. Over five years worth of coloured pins and tiny flags, of dives planned and succeeded. Five years of his and Lucio's notes were on that chart. Junkrat's chicken scratch, Lucio's quick, excited writing in all capital letters. Junkrat had torn a quarter of the chart off weeks ago and brought it down to the work-raft under the marina and spent a happy and useful afternoon with Lucio and Roadhog. 

Lucio and Junkrat had known about Misreported, everyone on the island did. But Roadhog had seen it, and had watched it for what had sounded like decades. Junkrat had spent hours happily watching Roadhog leaning up out of the water to write in black sharpie and talk with quiet, steady explanations.

Now that piece of the chart hung back in it's original place, with the decisive, surprisingly old fashioned writing of Roadhog's notes. It was still wavy from having dried in the sun, and the salt water that had been splash or spread over it had dried in pale white lines.

"Quarter with the water damage," Junkrat shut his eyes and shuddered. He knew that chart, could draw the hydrography from memory. He didn’t know the area like Lucio did as a pilot, or like Roadhog who lived in them, but he knew it like a goldfish knows it's tank. He knew the sea around him better than he knew his cottage. "There's a dark blue circle in the stretch of light blue, that's Misreported Basin. Next to an island with no name."

"Oh yeah," There were three by the chart now. Literacy rates in the Junkers were apparently higher than Junkrat had anticipated. "Why no name?"

"It was misreported," Junkrat was cradling his side and still talking through his teeth, "Ain't you been listening?"

"So what about an island with no name will get you out of debt with us," One of those not captivated by cartography hadn't taken their eyes off Junkrat.

"There's wrecks down there that no one can get to, because it's too dangerous. A lot of wrecks. And most of them are from the emerald shipping disaster of..."

"Emeralds?"

That caught their attention. Junkers liked shiny things after all. And the emeralds had attracted Junkrat too briefly.

"Emeralds from the colonies on the mainland were being shipped through the islands a hundred years ago. Most of the ships sank over Misreported Basin, and they're still down there." Junkrat clenched his teeth, the pain had reached some equilibrium inside him, and he managed to slowly drag himself upright again, cradling his side and breathing shallow and slow. Every breath felt like a chore. Unless he was consciously forcing himself to draw breath, he stopped.

"Why not?"

"Too dangerous. The basin's a sinkhole," Junkrat invented. The pain in his side helped give some authentic frustration to his lie. "There's a hole worn under the seafloor there to a fissure between the plates, whenever they shift, heat comes up, makes a column of bubbles. Ships can't float on bloody bubbles mate, they all sunk, and sand and silt and rocks covered em up after. Just needs some shifting."

"So how do you plan on getting us our emeralds."

He had them. It hadn't been a plan when he told Lucio to run, but it was already coming together. It almost always did.

The sun had gone down, and the glow from the round windows and around the edges of his busted door on the north west wall had gone. The sky outside was navy, with a line of pale blue-green bleeding up from the horizon. No one inside Junkrat's little cottage bothered to light a lamp.

Junkrat took a breath, and starting talking fast.

It was dark on Sugar Shell when Junkrat finally finished. The Junkers prodded Junkrat upright, slapped a strip of duct tape over his mouth, tied his wrists together with a pitiful knot Lucio and Roadhog would have rolled their eyes over, and left for the harbour. Junkrat was limping slightly around the pain in his side, and two of the Junkers were walking slowly, burdened with the weight of every single explosive that Junkrat had had stashed for a rainy day.

The sky this evening was perfectly clear and the stars were quite lovely, but figuratively, this was exactly a situation that called for seventy extra kilograms of explosives.

They walked quietly down the long stairs into town, past the open windows of the tall houses where people were sleeping, or sitting up listening to the radio, or talking quietly on their terraces in the cool breeze. Junkrat kept pace with the Junkers, giving them no trouble, no cause for violence. He needed to get these people out of town, out of the place where the people who'd taken Junkrat in lived and worked on this happy, peaceful, scorching hot island.

He felt detached from it, the narrow streets crowded with plants and laddered gardens dripping from their evening watering. The open windows and the soft sounds of the occasional radio or late night guitar. The terraces built into the side of the hill for little farms, peppers and tomatoes and okra spreading huge in their beds. The smell of woodsmoke and pine-tar, the cool salt air gusting up from the harbour as the heat kept rising from the stone streets, still baking from the sun.

Junkrat fought off the feeling he was seeing this place for the last time. This was just a simple errand. After this he was going to come home and get Torbjorn and Satya to help him fix his cottage. He was going to go to the beach on  _ Hylinea  _ and lounge in the sun leaning on Roadhog and listening to Lucio singing and eat sweets from his friends at Mei's. He was going to go diving again. He was going to find more lost things, lost treasures no one else could find. He was going to see Roadhog again. Going to talk to him again. He had a lot he wanted to say and he still had time, still had to have time.

The Junkers jabbed him sharply to the right. They were at the harbour now, and Junkrat had unconsciously turned to take the path around to the Lucio’s place. He could just see the pale shape in the darkness of Lucio's little wharf house, as the Junkers bullied him down onto one of the working wharfs.  _ Hylinea  _ was docked there. Right there, so close. 

The Junker's had a ship, which surprised Junkrat even if it shouldn't have, since he'd heard they'd been expanding out aggressively in the last few years. It was a steel-hulled trawler, painted black and grey, and must have been hugely valuable at one point. The bow was high, rising thirty feet out of the water, covered to allow protection in the bow, and the hull sloped down from there, leaving midships ten feet from rail to waterline, before rising again to accommodate the stern-castle accommodations. The whole ship in profile looked a little like a proper Victorian dowager turning her nose up at impropriety. The Junkers had painted over her original name on the high bow, and scrawled  _ Fury  _ over it in dribbly white paint.

Junkrat stared at it without comment, even if he could get one out past the duct tape. The ship was a decade or so out of use, with it's fishing winches and gear clearly rusted into uselessness. Lucio would have a fit if he saw the state of it. The Junkers could run a gang, any number of heists, and a kidnapping, but there was absolutely no seamanship skills here.

They pushed Junkrat onboard, over the midships decks between the old hatches, and into the accommodations. It was warm below decks, reeking with too many filthy bodies and no showers, and noisy with a radio and a card game going somewhere under his feet. They shoved him on towards the stern, through the empty galley and crew mess, and finally let him go after pushing him into the cold store. It was, apparently, the only cabin on the ship that had a lock, and Junkrat heard it snap shut behind him. It was dark, and slightly chilly, with a fitful sounding refrigeration unit gamely trying to keep pace with the island's heat and humidity in one corner.

Junkrat pulled the tape off his mouth, and tugged the pathetic knot free from around his wrist with his teeth. There were little round scuttles up high above the shelves of food, and they let in the thin light from the harbour and stars. Junkrat began to pick out bags of onions and potatoes, sacks of rice and an entire shelf of canned foods, and more recent looking left overs. He absently helped himself to a roasted chicken, and began arranging somewhere to sleep in something resembling comfortable.

He was lying decadently over a few stacked bags of potatoes and rice, eating his second drumstick when the  _ Fury's  _ engines snarled to life with a violence that shook the ship. No seamanship, but the Junkers could do terribly efficient things to an engine. The shore power connection was broken, and the struggling refrigerator spun down with a grateful series of clicks. They slipped lines, and the engines revved and roared, and the ship leaned out from its docking, and floated free.

Junkrat looked out the stern scuttles at the lights of Sugar Shell. The lines of streets, the red and yellow light over Mei's bakery door, the soft glow where electricity wasn't reliable or too expensive, and people had simply kept their old oil lamps as a matter of course. The fairy lights in the palm trees by the hotel. The bonfires burning on the beach.

Homesickness caught Junkrat by the throat suddenly and he let out a long, slow breath, reminding himself that this was part of the plan. That Lucio had gotten away clean. That Roadhog was going to be there, waiting for Junkrat tomorrow morning. He was going home after this.

_ Fury  _ rode over the first of the long swells coming in from the ocean, and Junkrat remembered that there was a swell on, and a lot of wind. He shut his eyes and put his head back. There was going to be a lot of seasick assholes on this ship very shortly, and if they wanted anything to eat, they could fight him for it.

__

 

Junkrat only had to throw three mid-sized potatoes and half a cleaned chicken carcass before the hungry Junkers decided it wasn't worth unlocking the door to the cold store.

They were out on big water now, the open stretch of sea between Sugar Shell's archipelago and the nameless island and it's little skerries. The  _ Fury  _ had been built to take swells larger than this, that high bow could ride up and cut through any swell you could find as long as she could keep herself pointing into them, but it had been intended to be sailed by competent people, and the Junkers were not sailors. It was a rough passage.

After a few hours, Junkrat had climbed down off his pallet of potatoes and stood in the widest stance he could manage, holding onto the counter with one hand as he dragged the sacks of rice and potatoes down to the lowest and most centred part of the cold storage. He wedged them in between the helm post and wall, and settled back down again as the deck below him pitched and rolled.

The engines roared unceasingly somewhere under him, and the yells of the Junkers never actually sounded panicked, and Junkrat managed to sleep after only twice being thrown off his makeshift bed by a particularly violent wave. After barricading himself into his nest with a sack of onions, Junkrat managed to sleep quite comfortably.

The waves weren't quite so high the next morning, and  _ Fury _ , with her disapprovingly snubby bow pushing through them, didn't seem to mind much. A pale light was filtering in the grimy scuttles when Junkrat woke, and he knew they must have reached the right area. This was more than enough time. And unless the Junkers were hopeless navigators as well as hopeless sailors, they would be right over Misreported.

The thought made something cold and slippery rush through him. The aching realization that came to anyone who went on the water. That under this little toy you trusted your life to, was fathoms and fathoms of cold salt water, in which lived things that would never, ever, turn down a free meal like your uncoordinated attempts at survival in their depths.

Roadhog was here.

Junkrat shut his eyes. Lucio had gotten away, Lucio knew what to do. Roadhog was what was here now.

The door of the cold storage banged open when Junkrat was absently eating a slab of cold lasagna and dozing on his root vegetables. The Junkers stared down at him in frank astonishment, and Junkrat shrugged back up at them.

They took him to the chart house, a marvel of fifty year old technology held together by Junker ingenuity, and Junkrat stared at the familiar chart they pushed in front of him. He'd spent happy hours with Roadhog and Lucio planning a trip here. Two edges of the page were a little rough and a little fuzzy from being torn from the larger chart. The thick paper slightly wavy from salt water spread over it. In his mind's eye, he could see Roadhog's wet arm dripping on the page as he wrote in blunt, old fashioned cursive over this very area.  _ Misreported here. Emeralds, raw ore, various shipping. 230 ~70 years. _

“Here we are," One of the Junkers, tapped the chart plotter, a modern one, cheap but obviously rewired. They were directly over the mouth of Misreported Basin.

I am standing, thought Junkrat, feeling cold, on wreck number 231. "Sure," he said aloud.

They were riding the swells over the deepest part of the ocean for a hundred miles in all directions. A place where the warm, comparatively shallow banks off the Sugar Shell Archipelago suddenly dropped in into an unnatural pit of cold, dark water fifty feet wide.

Where something huge lived. Something that was always hungry.

These Junkers were not mariners. And they were not going to survive what Junkrat was going to do to them.

"You're going in the water, telling us where to plant some fireworks," The Junker with the split lip looked even more bruised this morning.

"Can't swim without fins, or--" Junkrat started, and was abruptly cut off.

"You're going in on a tether."

They were going to put him in the water like a worm on a hook over the mouth of Misreported.

"Sure," Junkrat said.

He could picture, with perfect clarity, the look of cautious apprehension on Roadhog's face when he first told them about Misreported. He'd been reluctant to say anything, but Lucio had wanted answers, and the lure of the treasure was too much for Junkrat to ignore. They had been out on Emris island, Lucio floating happily on his back in the water in his swim shorts and binder with his shades on and face turned towards the sun. Junkrat had been sitting on the lowest level of the old stone breakwater with his legs in the water. Roadhog had been leaning up out of the water, arms cross on the hot stones beside him, mask pushed back so Junkrat could watch his mouth move. It had been a clear windy day in the spring, and the scattered palms and beach grass on the island behind them had been hushing softly, the noise mingling with the sound of the surf spreading up the sand.

"How big could Misreported be? It hardly eats." Junkrat remembered saying.

"Huge," Roadhog said flatly to Junkrat's half curious, half flippant question, "It eats a lot more then you might think. And it's always hungry."

Months after that first mention of Misreported, of Roadhog confirming the local legends about it, they had been on the work raft with the torn quarter of Junkrat's over-sized chart on the rough wood between the three of them. Roadhog hadn't been able to get Junkrat to drop the plan to dive on Misreported, and Lucio had seemed curious despite his cautious nature. He'd grown up hearing legends about Misreported after all. He'd learned to navigate from older sailors who had known what waters to avoid. Roadhog had been against it, but he'd be here, he'd come.

They escorted Junkrat to midships deck between the high, covered bow and the stern castle, where the hull rose up in four foot high rails on either side of them. Six junkers were busy struggling into wetsuits, their gear scattered haphazardly over the steel hatch covers to the old fish hold. The deck was pocked with rust under his feet and filthy with tracked in sand and dirt.

Junkrat took the lull in their attention of him to hook his arms over the rounded top of the rail, and look out at the water. It was windy out, hot when the sun shone through the heavy clouds racing overhead. Even in the lee of the unnamed island and on the shallow banks, the waves were long, ten feet high with the wind tearing white mare's manes from the crests.

"Hey, get back from there."

A hand closed over Junkrat's shoulder and he barely felt the pull.

"I sink like a hammer, mate," He said flatly. "I'm not going anywhere."

The white sand and stone of the banks was just visible when they were looking down in the trough of the wave, when the ocean was a few feet lower than usual and the sun was shining down from between the clouds. The water was only forty to fiftyfeet here, and Junkrat could just see the hard lines that weren't sand or rock, that were the long edges of sunken ships and ruined steel. The white of the ocean floor was littered in all directions with wrecks. Two hundred and thirty of them.

It was beautiful, if you didn't notice them. The unnamed island was pink and white, rising in a hill like a diving whale's back, and was fringed with a few palms and white sand. There were little rock skerries nearby, more little mounds of stone like attentive, diving dolphins. The water was clean and empty of shipping traffic and would be warm and lovely to swim in when the swell wasn't on. The banks around Misreported were beautiful and flatly avoided by everyone but the ignorant or dismissive. There were huge, yellow and black warning buoys placed around its banks which the Junkers had clearly ignored.

Right next to the ship's edge, where Junkrat was looking down with frozen, mesmerized horror, the white of the ocean floor ended, and turned starkly black below him. They were floating over the edge of a cliff.

He had wanted to do this. He had wanted to be here not twenty four hours ago.

But he'd expected to have Lucio with him. He'd expected to have Roadhog with him. 

They had been working together for months. For months Junkrat had been diving, and for months, his terror of the water, of what could be waiting for him when he hit the surface and sank helplessly down was eased piece by piece with Roadhog there, where Junkrat could touch him when he wanted to.

Junkrat's heart was beating slippery and cold and panicked-fast and he couldn't breath right. He had a plan. He had to do this. He couldn't stop now.

Suddenly he felt like he was watching from outside his own body, and powerlessly asking questions that were obvious. Why were they getting him to strip down to his shorts and put this harness on? Why were they pushing a heavy tank onto his back? Why were they buckling a belt of weights around his waist and locking it in place? Why were they telling him to put his mask on and pushing a regulator into his hand? Why were they clipping a diving line to his harness, on the back of the tank, where he couldn't reach it? He watched, with what could have passed for cool detachment as the other end of the tether was clipped to the front of one of the Junkers. She wasn't wearing many weights; they anticipated that Junkrat was going to be her weight.

They didn't even know how much he weighed, Junkrat thought in muffled indignation. They had no idea how much weight he was going to need to put him in neutral buoyancy.

They didn't care, the answer came back, they didn't care if he died.

There was a lot of activity going on that he didn't care about. They were moving a little way downwind of Misreported Basin. They were fighting with the lifting arm of the deck crane and trying to rig a scoop door, a massive slab of oak bound in iron, by its corners from the crane hook. They were trying to figure out the windlass and if the anchor chain really was fused into a solid mass of rust or just looked that way. They were asking if they had an anchor? And they did apparently because they managed to drop it and seventy feet of rusted chain that hadn't been moved in years shot suddenly out the hawsehole after it.

Someone screamed when seventy feet of chain shot past them a little too close.

_ Fury  _ swung around as the anchor hit sand, dragged back as the chain paid out, and then whoever was at the windlass found a dog and checked the chain.  _ Fury  _ gave a noticeable jerk and stopped, the anchor dragged, turned, and Junkrat felt the hitch in  _ Fury's  _ motion when it caught. She rode up and over the next wave without moving, and her engines went to neutral. They cut out after an interminable time and the deck crew, looking bewildered, began hoisting the scoop door up with the crane. It rose up, level in the air, a cable shackled to each of its four corners meeting at the crane hook, and they pushed it outboard and lowered it. A dive platform. Which would have been a good idea if they weren't in ten foot swells. The foot thick slab of oak with it's iron edging slammed against the  _ Fury's  _ hull and grated against it with every wave.

The group of Junkers around him, in full dive gear and each carrying a bag of Junkrat's explosives, began walking to the rail. He watched his mismatched feet, no finns, walk with them. There was an eight foot tether between him and the his buddy, and the dive line was stiff, braided stuff, rope that had very little flex to it, wouldn't wrap around anyone in the water and hinder them, more like a pole then a tether. No one would be able to cut it. Six divers and Junkrat, the human counter weight, reached the rail and the Junkers climbed up over with their fins hooked over their arm. They began the descent down the jacob's ladder to their makeshift platform.

"You first," The Junker with his tether clipped to her harness said, jerking her head at the rail.

Junkrat climbed down, trying to balance on his peg leg on ladder boards that had holes cut for hand holds. Had to focus.  When he climbed down the ten feet from the rail to the bucking dive platform, he had to be careful not get slammed between the massive platform and the unyielding steel hull of the ship.

The Junkers pulled him down before he was ready, and he snarled and swore with a vehemence and rage he hadn't felt since he was a teenager. The Junkers brought the worst out in him.

Then they were standing, the Junkers ready with their masks secure and their fins on, at the edge of the platform and ready to jump.

"We'll deal with the explosives, you bring us to where we need to go, and point the the places we need to rig them. We think you're trying to play us, or you make a break for it, or you try and get to these explosives, I unclip this tether and you can sit on the floor of the fucking ocean and watch your air gage run down."

"Sure," Junkrat heard himself say.

The Junkers looked at him, eyeing him for signs of rebellion, of duplicity. They probably saw exactly what Junkrat did, hovering a foot or so outside his body. They were looking at a tall blonde man gone stark white under his suntan, hunched under the tank they had put on him, of the excessive weights they had locking around him.

They were balancing on a wildly bucking platform hanging off a rusting old ship on the edge of a drop into warm water empty of anything but 230 shipwrecks and Misreported.

Junkrat hoped it wasn't already awake.

He couldn't make the jump when it was his time, and instead, the Junker on the other end of his tether yanked him in from five feet below the surface. He was pulled down, dragged sideways and then he was under.

The water hit him with a shock. Almost as warm as the air and he sank so fast his left ear erupted with pain. He couldn't swim, he couldn't rise, and he was fifteen feet under the water nearly biting through the mouthpiece of his regulator before he could even see anything.

Under the water, and hanging like a worm on a hook over the sandy sea floor, it was very, very easy to see the graveyard of ships all around him. His breath caught in his throat. There were ships broken over older wrecks, ships that had been torn apart slowly, their twisted open hulls and broken decks spread over a hundred feet. He was floating a little over halfway down and watching as the sun made wide, wavering bands of light play over the bright white sand. It made the worn, ragged edges of salt-crushed wood and broken steel and rotting fibre glass more alarming. When the clouds poured over the sun, Misreported's Basin became a black pit ahead of them, into which his diver buddy was dragging him.

He was almost literally deadweight below her, but she didn't seem to mind, and the five other divers with them were carrying explosives that were at least as heavy as he was.

Junkrat was still struggling to breathe. The pain in his ear had broken and now it was just a dull, worrying ache. They were sloping down fast through the water, the Junkers wanting to get as low as they possibly could as fast as they could. Junkrat was still watching himself from outside his body, noting the pain in his ear, the lightheadedness, he wasn't breathing right, he knew this, Lucio had taught him how to breath during a dive.

They had to be here. He must have just not been able to see them in the shining clear water. Above him,  _ Fury  _ floated, rocking and lunging up the waves. The water was so clear Junkrat could see the individual rivets on her scummy hull when he looked up. There was no other boat in sight.

One of the divers jabbed him, signed  _ Where  _ and Junkrat blinked from behind his mask. He looked down and choked on his next breath.

While he'd been looking around for Roadhog for Lucio or  _ Hylinea _ , watching  _ Fury  _ charging up the side of every swell as it came, the bright white sand of the banks had gone. They had reached Misreported's Basin and he was hanging helplessly over an uncharted depth of cold, dark water fifty feet wide.

Junkrat's heart stopped, and his gut went cold. His strength left him entirely. Dimly, he felt something buzz at the back of his head, something ringing in his busted ear. He shut his eyes briefly. He was here for a reason. He'd brought them here to die.

Another jab, another impatiently signed  _ Where _ .

Junkrat pointed numbly, down into the dark water of the Basin, and the Junkers and their explosives obediently dove.

It took half an hour. Half an hour of Junkrat staring down into dark water and wondering if he'd really seen something move, or if that was his imagination. Half an hour in the dark, and the cold, feeling the weight of the belt they'd locked into place around him pulling him down.

He knew exactly how to take down a vertical rock wall. He had done this before. With far fewer explosives then what the Junkers were packing. They didn't seem to notice the configuration he was using. Or if they did they must have thought it was part of the plan.

Once they had managed to find a place for every single explosive in the bags they had brought down, Junkrat signed to accent. The five who'd been carrying the explosives rose far too quickly, and Junkrat didn't bother to correct them, since they were going to be dead in an hour anyway and it wouldn't matter if they had the bends when they did. His carrier struggled to fin up with Junkrat hanging off her. At one point, near the top of the accent, Junkrat felt a jerk on his tether, and waited, holding his breath, to feel the drop.

She didn't drop him however. She was already on the platform and they had just clipped Junkrat to one corner of it, and he hung uselessly eight feet below the sea swells rocking over the dive platform. The noise of the platform slamming into the steel hull from here was deafening, but the pause before they forced him to surface was helpful. He was probably the only one who did not, in fact, have the bends.

They dragged him up eventually by the simple expedient of raising the entire dive platform on it's crane arm with the winch, and Junkrat was hauled upwards, hanging from his harness with fifty pounds of diver weights cinched too tight around his waist. They dumped him into midships deck once he was back onboard.

"How far do we have to go, are we clear of the blast radius?" One of the Junkers was leaning over him to ask.

Junkrat was about to answer when his tank was abruptly disconnected, and jerked off his back. Junkrat grunted in surprise and pulled his mask off and they unclipped his harness. No one, he noticed, was making the least effort to take the weights belt off him.

"I had no idea Junkers were so fastidious these days," Junkrat pushed his soaking wet hair back. He had just gone into Misreported Basin and made it out alive. He was going to rid Sugar Shell of it's Junker problem.

He tried to contain his delight as several Junkers scowled at him.

"We're fine. Blast'll be channeled up from the basin mouth not out." He tried to sound like an authority. In truth, they were absolutely too close, but getting caught in a blast like this was going to be like a feather-dusting compared to what would come next.

The explosion came with absolutely no fanfare. Someone had just overheard what Junkrat had said and pressed detonate.

Junkrat started in shock. It was already done. It was almost over. He looked around at the Junkers, looking for whoever had pressed that button, who had been the one to finish what he'd laid up for them.

_ Fury  _ suddenly rose and kicked under them, the entire ship shuddered and steel shrieked as a pillar of water blasted up, and fell back into a huge wave that dragged  _ Fury  _ back on her anchor chain. The ship pitched up, the deck sloping violently under them, and Junkrat, still sitting, was the only one not thrown back towards the stern castle. The anchor chain snapped back and forth on the deck in the bow with a lethal amount of tension, and for a second, Junkrat watched, waiting with detached interest to see if it would snap. Then the wave washed over them,  _ Fury  _ lost her fight to stay above it, and a wall of snarling white water broke over the covered bow and slammed into the midship decks and torn the struggling Junkers down again.

Junkrat was braced against one of the stern hatches, with his hands already covering his face so he could breath through the water driving sideways. He heard someone scream and something smashed above him. The windows to the pilot house probably. Someone had just received a few hundred pounds of white water moving fast and preceded by a sheet of broken glass.

_ Fury  _ crested out of the wave, dragging her bow back into the sunshine and still fighting her anchor chain, and then the decks tipped bow down and Junkrat swung around, sliding into the other deck hatch and clinging to it as Junkers fell past him, spinning and bouncing from the stern towards the bow and the groaning, switching anchor chain. They pitched down into the trough left in the water after the boom, and when the bow hit the bottom, the force of it knocked the breath out of Junkrat and several more people screamed. The crane arm, swinging wildly above them, broke on impact and spun wildly down the deck. Eight hundred pounds of steel with the heavy dive platform still shackled to it pinwheeling end over end until it clipped the rail and whipped off into the water.

Junkrat started after it. He was grateful someone had unclipped him from that whole arrangement.

Another wave of water over the bow, less violent this time, and  _ Fury  _ rose again, riding up out of the shadow the blast wave had cast over them. It felt like it was pouring rain. The spray had gone a few hundred feet up and was falling over them now. The next wave crested, and now water was choppy as it poured back in towards where it had been blasted out. The steady, unperturbed ocean swells were still sweeping inexorably in from the west.

Junkrat was lying flat on his back, grinning up at the rainbow the spray had cast in the bright, afternoon sunshine. He felt like he'd just caused a miracle. He wanted to do it again. The deck was a tangled, blasted mess, there was torn and bent steel and Junkers were screaming or sobbing around him and Junkrat felt dazed and detached and there was a muffled kind of jubilation humming under his skin. He had spent five years being grateful for Lucio's hesitance to use more explosives than strictly necessary. This was better though. A bigger boom. And it wasn't over.

Someone grabbed his arm. They had probably meant to hurt him, but they'd caught his right arm and he'd only noticed when they yanked him up and around.

"What the hell Jamison?!"

Ah, the one with the split lip and vaguely familiar features. Someone who remembered a teenagers name years after they had died. Junkrat just grinned at them.

"Just wait," Junkrat heard himself though a ringing in his right ear. His left ear felt heavy and muffled. Something to deal with later. He wasn't worried about it now. "That's not even the half of it."

Junkrat felt a blade slide over the skin of his throat before he registered that the Junker in front of him had drawn a knife and was going for his throat. Junkrat barely pulled away, not even scared, just annoyed, irritated that this wonderful moment was literally being cut short. He didn't recognize the killing intent for anything more than an inconvenience.

Hot blood splattered down his neck and Junkrat blinked and jerked away. The heat of his own blood on his soaking skin had been enough to wake him and suddenly Junkrat snapped back into himself. This wasn't happening to someone he was spectating, this wasn't something he could watch with detached interest. He was bleeding and the Junker was drawing the knife back for another lunge.

Junkrat twisted out of his grip, snarling into his face, caught the knife blade with his right hand and yanked it away. Metal scraped on metal in an unholy shriek and the divers knife went clattering over the ruined, pitching decks.

The Junker blinked, taken aback by the sudden ferocity. Then he suddenly looked past Junkrat and looked up. His face went ashen.

Junkrat didn't need to look, Junkrat knew enough watching the Junkers. They were frozen, clinging to the ship, battered from the blast and bloody and furious and suddenly they were all looking up. A shadow was crossing the deck, getting larger and the Junkers were looking way, way up at their death as the last of the spray rained down on them.

Misreported had surfaced for wreck number 231.

Junkrat had excellent reflexes. He dodged past the first Junker and ran over the wildly disordered decks towards the rail. The shadow Misreported cast had already crossed the ship. Water was dripping off it, heavier than the falling spray had been. He was running through the water in the shade.

The rail was four feet high, and Junkrat vaulted over it before he remembered he was still carrying fifty pounds locked around his waist.

The ten foot drop to the dark, foamy water felt interminable. The inevitability of the chaos under him, of what was going to happen here. Everything; the wildly bucking  _ Fury _ , the terrified Junkers, Misreported rising in wrathful hunger from the ocean floor, and Junkrat, hanging poised over the sixty feet of water to his death, it all felt perfectly poised and frozen. So many things were about to happen, and they were going to happen very quickly.  He felt like a glass buoy, carelessly dropped, about to smash. The waves were choppy and high, streaked with white water and in the shade of Misreported, it was dark and he couldn't see the ocean floor anymore.

He wouldn't until he hit it anyway. And that wouldn't take long.

He crashed into the water, and sank.

The sand had been thrown into a cloud around the explosion, and Junkrat fell through it, dropping so fast a mouthful of air was forced out of him, his lungs contracting too fast. His sore ribs sent a mean little shriek of pain through him. He was blind and it was cold, and Misreported was here, above him, beside him, awake and furious.

There was a brief scream of tortured metal that shook the water around him, and then a weight dropped through the water at Junkrat's back, sucking him after it. Poor disdainful  _ Fury  _ had been torn open and yanked down. Junkrat felt the wash of current and knew there were now more than a dozen panicking bodies in this cloudy, turbulent water. All these people and Misreported was in among them. A huge current of water and sand swept past him, diving down and turning, and in its midst was a darker shape, bewilderingly huge and moving with terrifying speed and precision.  

Misreported suddenly turned to face him, so fast Junkrat felt his heart stutter and his gut jerk in absolute mindless terror. Misreported watched him fall through the water towards it, and Junkrat felt the moment it made eye contact. It charged. 

A mouth wider than his cottage snapped open under Junkrat, edged in pointed teeth that looked shockingly white in the cloudy water. Misreported up through the sandy water as Junkrat fell helplessly to meet it. 

Well, thought Junkrat, watching the huge mouth accelerating towards him with frankly horrifying speed and force. Well fuck.

Something heavy slammed into him, and Junkrat was knocked briefly to one side, another mouthful of air startled out of him, and he looked down at what hit him. The fluke of an extremely familiar anchor, and it had hooked him neatly around his waist. He grinned at it. Then he was yanked sharply back and away. The huge mouth snapped shut a few feet from him with a wash of water that tore at Junkrat's hair. Misreported's huge shape lunging harmlessly past him, and turned away and was gone in the cloudy, sand-blasted water. 

Junkrat stared after it, and watched blood trail away from him as he was dragged backwards. He realized, in that instant, that he'd been leaving a column of blood above him, like a trail; an arrow point straight to him. But Misreported wasn't the only predator who hunted by blood.

His momentum was checked so suddenly, he lost another mouthful of air he couldn't afford to lose as he slammed into something warm. Then Roadhog's arms closed around him, huge and fast and holding onto him too tightly, using that huge anchor to keep him hooked in close. Junkrat started, and the terror had paralyzed him before was gone and he was clinging desperately to Roadhog, face down, knees up, shaking and feeling his pounding heart skipping a beats in sheer relief. Against his back, Roadhog's chest and belly rumbled with a long, low growl Junkrat could feel more then hear in the water. His arms tightened around him, Roadhog nuzzling into Junkrat's hair and cupping one hand over Junkrat's side, holding on too tightly, the first time he'd ever bruise Junkrat. His tail was curled forward protectively, cupping up around him, they were spinning uselessly in the water with the leftover momentum of Junkrat slamming into him. 

Quick and terrifying death by ocean dwelling monstrosity had been barely avoided. Drowning was becoming inevitable. Junkrat squirmed briefly, fighting the new panic. Even with Roadhog helping him, there was no way he was going to reach the surface safely. They were too far down, it would take too long and most of the Junkers were on the surface above him, easy prey. Roadhof and Junkrat were spinning idly down through the water, Roadhog still curled around Junkrat, and Misreported was plucking Junkers down in turns above them. 

Roadhog tightened one arm around him, his big hand with the anchor pressed into Junkrat's stomach, pinning the two of them together while his other hand reached up to the mako skin and shoved it back off his face. Then Roadhogs mouth was startlingly hot on Junkrat’s shoulder, pressing a kiss into him and nuzzling against his cheek. Junkrat started and turned blindly towards him, confused and delighted and terrified and Roadhog's hand cupped the side of his head and pulled him gently in. The urgency in this was the nearest thing to desperate Junkrat had ever felt from him. Junkrat could feel Roadhog's heart thudding against his back, too fast and too hard and if he was going to die drowned, Junkrat was grateful it was in Roadhog's arms

Roadhog kissed him hard, pushing his mouth over Junkrat's, hot and urgent and pinning Junkrat in place with both hands holding on too tight. Then Junkrat started in surprise as Roadhog pushed a breath into him, and he gasped and breathed in and his chest shuddered as it filled. Junkrat sagged with relief and squirmed around as Roadhog ease one hand off his head, leaning up into the kiss, pushing back because he thought he was going to die in this dark water and he still might but--

Something sharp, and cold, and alien pressed into the side of his neck. He’d forgotten about the slash on his neck. Junkrat grunted and started with pain as Roadhog pushed something down into the cut, driving it flat under the skin of his neck.

Junkrat jerked away, one hand up to his neck in hurt bewilderment. He was waiting for the pain to hit him, braced for it. Roadhog growled again, more vibrations in the water, urgent and low, and held onto Junkrat as he twisted, finally leveling himself and slashing his tail through the water. Then they were moving fast, Roadhog holding Junkrat close against him, one arm cradling him to his chest and belly as Junkrat pushed his face into Roadhog's shoulder, both hands on the bloody side of his neck, and waited to start drowning again. The cut didn’t hurt. He couldn’t even feel the cut anymore.

He's never swum with Roadhog when he hadn't been taking his time. Never with this kind of vicious urgency, and it was strange and lovely to feel Roadhog powering through the water, the huge tail moving fast and easy. Sometimes Junkrat forgot, or maybe didn't like to think of, how big Roadhog was, how powerful. Or if he did, he thought of it in terms of how lucky Junkrat was, how Roadhog could use that power, his size and his strength for  _ him _ .

There was something hard and faintly triangular under the skin of his neck, and Junkrat took a moment, then reached up impulsively to touch Roadhog's neck, and felt the same thing. Hard and triangular, under the skin a little below an old scar. Roadhog tipped his head slightly, turning his face so Junkrat could feel his neck a little better. Confirm it was the same.

Junkrat wasn't drowning.

He blinked and pulled back slightly to look at the dark water rushing by, fast enough that the sand caught at his skin, prickling in his hair. He could see, with unprecedented clarity, six Junkers floundering in the water above and behind them. Could see that  _ Fury  _ was gamely staying off the sea floor, hanging under the surface, bow-up with some unbroken pocket of air inside her. He could see Misreported very, very clearly. He could pick out the colours of it’s skin, even through the thick, whirling sand. The water wasn't dark anymore. Junkrat hung on a little tighter to Roadhog, the two of them clinging together as Roadhog banked around  _ Fury _ , staying out of Misreported's line of sight as it whipped around in the water for another pass.

Junkrat remembered asking Roadhog, months ago.  _ How do you breath underwater? _

He'd been absolutely certain Roadhog had been just trying to stall for time when he'd replied with the same answer. Every time.

Only five Junkers left. The water was sandy and dark and there was more than just his blood trailing in eddies around the huge wake Misreported left.

They tipped up suddenly, rising so fast Junkrat's stomach swooped to catch up to him, and the huge, dark lance of Misreported shot underneath them. They harmlessly crossed paths, Roadhog swimming so close over Misreported's back, Junkrat could have touched it if he reached down.

And then they were past each other and Roadhog twisted and dove suddenly, racing straight down and Junkrat had a moment of sheer panic when he realized where they were going, straight down, into Misreported Basin.

Roadhog seemed to sense his panic, another low rumble on Junkrat's skin, too low to carry, just for him, and Junkrat relaxed automatically. 

His ears didn't hurt anymore. His core didn't feel pinched from the rising pressure as Roadhog swam down. The water didn't feel cold on his skin. He could see into the darkness around him, at the walls of the basin becoming smoother, more like a tunnel and less like a hole in the ocean floor, and then Roadhog banked and tipped sideways, leveling out and swimming into a fissure in the rock, ten feet wide and thirty feet tall. They were swimming up stream, and the water was fresh instead of salty. There was a light, bleak and pale white, unnatural and real ahead of them.

Junkrat's head broke the surface of fresh water and he gasped in his first breath in seven and a half minutes. He barked out a laugh.

"Hooley dooley, I knew I kept you around for something."

"Shut up," Roadhog growled, but he was smiling, and his arms tightened around Junkrat. "Scared me," Roadhog's mask was still pushed back. They were chest to chest in the water, and Junkrat could feel Roadhog's too-fast heartbeat against his skin.

They were floating in a fast, underground fresh-water river, in a little cave of trapped air, a hundred feet from the sunshine. One of Lucio’s diving lights had been left on a shallow level scoop above the water, showing pale, damp rock all around them. It was far, far too tiny for Misreported. It was the safest place Junkrat had been in days. 

"You got me," Junkrat murmured, rubbing his face into Roadhog's shoulder. "You came for me. Lucio got away ok."

Roadhog grunted. "Lucio had a plan. He knew what you wanted to do."

"Ha, I bet you were thrilled."

"Not,” Roadhog said with feeling, "my favorite of your many plans."

"Sorry." Junkrat said. There was real regret there. Jagged and unfamiliar and he didn't know what to do with it. "Sorry Hog."

Roadhog shifted slightly, one hand covering the back of Junkrat's head, cradling him close. He seemed to draw in around Junkrat, like he wanted to pull him inside his body for safe keeping. "Don't scare me like that."

"Hoggy," Junkrat said after a beat, he was still clinging to Roadhog, both hands flat over Roadhog's shoulders, "How do you breath underwater mate?"

"Magic," Roadhog grunted, there was a little laugh there, and some regret. "I'm sorry. You can get rid of it, if you don't..."

"Nah," Junkrat shrugged off and disclaimed any wish of getting rid of the unexplained shark tooth under the skin on neck, where gills should be. "This mean I'll be like you?"

There was a pause, and Junkrat felt Roadhog's heart barely skip a beat.

Giving into idle temptation, Junkrat pressed a kiss into his chest, just to see if he could make his heart skip another. He could.

"No," Roadhog murmured. He stroked the hand over Junkrat's head down, tipping his face up.

"Disap--" Junkrat started to say, then Roadhog kissed him, quick and hard and still desperate, and Junkrat pulled himself up into the kiss with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Roadhog's tongue felt huge in his mouth, hot and too tentative and Junkrat made an embarrassingly needy little noise and sucked hungrily at it.

"'Rat," Roadhog broke the kiss, trying to look annoyed as Junkrat splashed in the water, reaching up to chase another. "'Rat," He tried again. Junkrat's hands were on his shoulders, pulling himself up with single minded focus. "We've got to meet Lucio."

"Give me a minute," Junkrat murmured, persistence had never failed him yet, and he so rarely had a chance like this. "I did nearly die just now. I was kidnapped, it was horrible. I deserve this."

Roadhog grunted, but it was just to cover a laugh, and then the kiss Junkrat had been chasing was pressing down into him again.  Roadhog holding Junkrat against him, the anchor in his hand a solid, familiar weight up and down his back as Roadhog leaned down. Junkrat tipped his head, opened his mouth as Roadhog's hand stroked over his head, holding him in place. He licked down into Junkrat's mouth briefly and pulled back, a little abruptly when Junkrat groaned.  

"Sorry," Roadhog muttered.

"Nah," Junkrat felt dazed, hot in the water as he pulled Roadhog back. "Get your back against the rocks mate, they're not too rough are they?"

"Junkrat," Roadhog said, swimming backwards slowly as Junkrat urged him on, "We can..."

"Please," Junkrat still felt dazed, "Please Roadie unless you don't want to be here with this happening right now because I do but not if..."

'The rocks aren't too rough," Roadhog murmured, he was floating half out of the water, back to the edge of a little rise in the rock wall with Lucio’s light behind him, some point of stability for what Junkrat had in mind.

"Good," Junkrat breathed. He was straddling Roadhog's belly, with his hand on either side of Roadhog's face. He reached up for Roadhog's mask and froze when Roadhog flinched back.

"Careful," Roadhog snarled. 

The urgency wasn't anger, it was fear. Junkrat froze and slowly pulled his hand back as Roadhog yanked his mask off, drove the fluke of his anchor into a gap in the wet rock and draped his mask over it.

“Don't touch that just now." Roadhog’s voice was quiet again. 

Junkrat just nodded, already forgetting the stupid mask. He was lready absorbed in studying Roadhog’s bare face. 

Roadhog looked steady back at him. He had had big eyes, a wide, direct stare that was undeniably human. It was what had shocked Junkrat the most about him, the first time they'd swam together. He'd expected Roadhog to have the eyes of a shark; cold, flat and black. Everything about him was predatory, huge and intimidating. But he had big brown eyes and a calm, direct gaze that Junkrat got lost in.

Junkrat could feel himself smiling too wide, staring happily at Roadhog as he blinked back at him.

"Should go meet Lucio," Roadhog murmured, stroking one hand slowly down Junkrat’s back.

“Is there a tearing hurry?" Junkrat replied. There wasn't. Or Roadhog wouldn't be letting Junkrat waste his time here.

Roadhog shook his head, and his white hair fanned gently in the water at his neck. His hands were heavy and warm on Junkrat's back.

"Good," Junkrat murmured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for checking this chapter out! Please excuse the horrible lack of Luico and not enough Roadhog but that will change. Next week's update will be another chapter of the McHanzo Five Times fic I'm working on, I update regularly on Mondays. The third and last chapter of this fic will be posted on Feb 20! If you have any questions or requests, please let me know in the comments, or come say hi on [my Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Beta reading by Daishar, who loves me and wants me to be happy I am so grateful <3
> 
> Edit, March 23, 2017: Hoo boy I missed that last chapter posting date. This fic is still in the works! I suddenly started working full time and was able to find a better place to live and so I'm also packing up to move. The final chapter to this is underway and will be posted as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience, I'll be here again soon <3


	3. Roadhog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the new tags! I hope you enjoy and extra super special thanks to [moriarty-i-s-back on tumblr](http://moriarty-i-s-back.tumblr.com/) for all her amazing encouragement and support!! (੭ˊ͈ ꒵ˋ͈)੭̸*✧⁺˚

They'd been out at Emris Island the first time Roadhog deliberately lied to Junkrat.

He hadn't mentioned some things, and constantly, carefully, withheld information. He'd told Junkrat and Lucio things that were technically true if not entirely accurate. He'd had his own history to protect. He'd wanted to preserve what anonymity a monstrous mershark could hope for. He hadn't wanted to lead them on either. He didn't want them to know everything he'd found in his years and years under the waves, because it hadn't all been treasure.

He'd known of Misreported, of course he had. The giant monster had jaws that opened to eight feet wide and was too long for anyone in Roadhog's time to measure. It was something the deckhands told each other about, but captains and their officers never seemed to talk about. Though that ignorance might have just been simple self preservation.

It wasn't an accident how Misreported had gotten it's name. It had been deemed 'misreported' after enough survivors telling of their encounters were hastily removed from their commission and put ashore without pension.

Roadhog had been a fisherman, and a whaler before that. He'd known the banks around Misreported were crowded with schools of small fish, since they knew anything large enough to be a danger to them would rouse a greater predator. Roadhog had appreciated the strategy. He himself had copied it, and spent a successful few years sending his toughest competitors to fish in the dead stretch over the pit in the banks. It had been a good strategy, and it had worked, but not without the occasional survivor.

Survivors, as Roadhog learned, are just enemies with nothing to lose.  

Survivors can occasionally carry enough sway with a court to insight a call for an arrest. Roadhog had gotten wind of a warrant out on him in the five minutes after docking at home for the first time in weeks. He'd slipped lines and stolen the ship while the captain and mate were ashore signing duties for their cargo. Two thirds of the crew joined him, and the last third he put ashore when he took on fresh water.

Piracy was a remarkably easy trade when you knew the waters. And knew where to run to hide. Years of fishing over Misreported Basin had taught Roadhog enough to be the creature's second choice when he brought a pursuer after him.

He had been running from a full rigged navy ship who'd been hunting him for weeks when he finally sank over Misreported. A chain shot from the navy ship had scythed four of his crew in half and ripped his foremast from the deck. The ferociously taught fore rig shrieked as the mast blew apart in a cloud of lethal splinters. All it’s fine rope-work, all the stays and shrouds and straining sail and dying sailors caught in it's rigging couldn't save it from tearing itself free and plunging into the water. The sails caught the water and dragged the ship around, pulling her head down as her only remaining main mast swung drunkenly as the ship rode broadside up a wave.

Roadhog had been calling orders and hauling on a new forestay with his crew and felt salt water rush over his feet as his ship rolled and took a slice of water over her leeward rail. He'd known then that he'd die here.

The main mast snapped an instant later as if in confirmation.

With both masts in the water, with all six sails dragging their progress to a halt, with his ship on it's side taking on water, with his crew dead or dying around him, Roadhog looked up, and saw their military pursuit turn to fire. Roadhog's ship would be utterly destroyed by a broadside from the giant oaken beast that loomed over them. He and his crew would die in seconds.

Roadhog relaxed. It was no less than he deserved. A good life spent on the water meant you could only die the same way.

But instead of a volley of six hundred and sixty combined pounds of iron hurled with the force and precision of an act of god, Roadhog's heart sank then began to pound in desperate rage when the navy sailors hurriedly began putting long boats down. They were going to row out to the sinking wreck of Roadhog ship. They would come to take him alive. To try him and his crew for mutiny and piracy and murder.

Roadhog had lived a long time on the ocean. He wasn't about to die in a stone box bound in iron somewhere inland.

He needed something to weigh him down though, and as he walked over the pitching decks towards the white water lashing over the rail, dragged one of the anchors out of the longboats strapped to the deck. The water was almost as warm as the air, and the bubbles that rushed up past him drowned out the noise above the surface. He sank down, until the bubbles had all rushed away from him, until the water became cold and the anchor in his hand could drag him down no further.

His crew was around him in the water. Twelve feet down and they were below him and around him, sinking after him, dead or dying, unwilling to be taken alive just to die in the bosom of their home county. Most sailors couldn't swim. If you went overboard, it was a long, cruel, slow death to die treading water. For most, it was faster, cleaner and much, much less frightening to die under the waves. It meant minutes of looking at blue water becoming darkness, instead of hours, or days with the weight and hungry vastness of the ocean around you. It was cruel to die frightened and exhausted and alone on the wide rolling waves with nothing but your head above the water below the sky.

It was better to die in minutes. Which was why Roadhog wasn't entirely sure why he'd lived long enough to see wooden ships with white sails turn to thundering steel.

"So, Misreported," Junkrat said with relish. He'd been sitting on the ancient stone breakwater off Emris island, was leaning forwards with his hands braced on either side of his knees.

Roadhog, lying belly up in the water like a dead goldfish with Junkrat's mismatched feet propped on his belly, grunted.

"How much treasure you think is down there mate? Just a rough estimate, don't worry about decimal places."

Roadhog looked up into the sky, where the pale blue-green above the horizon darkened to navy. There were no clouds over head, just a breeze ruffling the long leaves of the scruffy palms on shore, the beach grass and Junkrat's salty damp hair.

"Or we could look else where," Lucio said. Lucio had been swimming long, slow laps around the breakwater without trouble or cessation.

"Over two hundred wrecks," Roadhog admitted. He'd led over thirty six of those wrecks into the water there.

"What," Lucio splashed in the water, bobbing upright before spluttering as he sank briefly. "Two hundred?!"

Junkrat was grinning, rapidly drumming his fingers over and over. The metal of his right hand made a  _ plink-plink-plink! _ on the stone. Roadhog waited.

"Anything stand out in those two hundred or so wrecks?” Junkrat sounded hopeful, “ Anything worth stealing?"

Roadhog nodded. He'd only led fishing ships or whaling fleets into Misreported Basin, but had found a lot of ships when he'd gone looking around that part of the ocean. The emerald shipments alone were worth the dive.

"I told you about Misreported," Lucio said quickly, trying to stifle Junkrat's obvious interest.

"Sure," Junkrat agreed amiably, dismissing a sea monster capable of devouring him whole and turning to face Roadhog, "Roadhog, what is there for treasure?"

"Emeralds," Roadhog grunted. He'd explored most of Misreported Basin. He’d found some ships he'd remembered the names of, found the remains of his own ship, the bones of his crew. He'd found trunks of gemstones bound for the mainland and he'd risked waking Misreported just to claw his way through some of the older ships.

"Can we dive it?" Junkrat asked, looking between Roadhog and Lucio.

Roadhog glanced at Lucio just as Lucio glanced at him, and together they shared a brief, heartfelt moment of mutual sympathy and understanding.

"No," Lucio said, looking back up at Junkrat, "You think I've told you about Misreported just so we could sail directly into it's mouth?"

"The old salts you learned from didn't have Roadhog," Junkrat replied with perfect confidence. "Ay mate? It might not even be real."

"It's real," Lucio said sourly, before Roadhog could.

Junkrat just grinned and tapped his foot, the only one he had left against Roadhog's chest. His confidence in Roadhog was charming, if also terrifying, and it made Roadhog uneasy to think about what he'd do to protect that high opinion of him. Beside him, Lucio was gamely staying upright in the water and Roadhog reached out, offering his arm to him. Lucio seemed to hesitate, and then hooked his arms over Roadhog's, hanging his slight weight off him and resting.

"Misreported will wake if any vessel comes close enough to dive from," Lucio said, and looked up at Roadhog, "Right?"

"Yeah," Roadhog lied.

And that was the first time he'd lied to them. He had his mask tipped back on his head, shading his eyes as he looked up at Junkrat, and wished things would stay like this. The three of them lounging in the sun comfortably discussing their next score without fear or any demands. He didn’t want to go back to Misreported with Lucio and Junkrat. 

He thought of Junkrat dying in the water over a year ago. He thought of his crew dying around him decades while his ship sank behind him. He didn't want to go back to Misreported’s territory just to see Junkrat where they'd died. He didn’t want Junkrat to find the emeralds that were down there, or the other treasurers Misreported had unknowingly accrued. He'd wanted to slow Junkrat's momentum before the wild eyed diver with the yellow hair and no fear in him had them out over the mouth of that monstrous basin this very afternoon. He wanted to make sure Junkrat was safe. He wanted more time.

In the end, the lie had slowed Junkrat down by only a few weeks.

Roadhog had realized after a few months of working with Junkrat and Lucio that he really wanted more time. He'd already had a strangely long life, and suddenly it wasn't enough. Every dive, every treasure threatened to be the last one Junkrat and Lucio would need. The one that made Junkrat lose interest in treasure seeking, the one that reminded Lucio he had a perfectly good job on his own. Roadhog had started stalling. Dragging out the time between dives. He didn't want this to end. He didn't want to be forced to choose to follow Junkrat inland and become useless to him or stay in the water, silent and alone and watching the ships overhead and finding gold he had no use for.

"Junkrat's been taken."

Lucio was crouched on the bow of  _ Hylinea  _ when Roadhog saw him the morning they were supposed to go to Emris Island for a day at the beach. He looked like he hadn't slept and there was a bruise showing on the dark skin of his arm.

Roadhog was a thief and a murderer and he had never, ever shown Lucio anything be careful and considered behavior. He’d been a violent boy, killing with a rock in his hand, and he’d been a killer on the ocean and he had never, ever, given Lucio the slightest reason to fear him. Roadhog liked Lucio, appreciate him and his steady, unwavering friendship. Appreciated the respect and bravery Lucio showed by swimming at his side, by letting Roadhog use his strength to help him and trusting him almost from the moment they met.

Now Roadhog grabbed the edge of Hylinea's bow and dragged it down in the water with jerk that sent Lucio sprawling. Roadhog lunged up until he was looming over Lucio in the dark cold of dawn with water pouring off him and nowhere to put his desperate, unnamed anger.

"Who took him?" Roadhog snarled from behind his mask.

Lucio was clinging to the wildly sloping foredeck of his little pilot boat, nearly sliding into the water. Terrifying as Roadhog must have been to him in that moment, Lucio didn't hesitate to cling to him to keep himself from sliding into the water.

"Junkers," he said immediately. He adjusted his grip on Roadhog’s arm and pulled himself a little way from the edge back on deck. "Junkers were waiting for him at the cottage, he told me to run and get you."

"Where is..." Roadhog started, ready to climb out of the water, ready to scare the hell out of Lucio and walk with him into battle anywhere on his island that Junkrat might be being kept. He was ready to take Junkrat back.

"Misreported." Lucio said grimly.

Roadhog relaxed slightly in flat astonishment, and allowed some of his weight to settle back in the water instead of planting it on Lucio's boat.  _ Hylinea  _ righted herself a little in the water and Lucio hitched himself back up into a crouch, still bracing himself with a hand on Roadhog's shoulder.

"He's taking them out to Misreported Basin, they've already left, they were on the old side trawler called  _ Fury _ . He's going to wake Misreported and feed the Junkers to it. All we have to do is keep him out of Misreported's mouth and keep him breathing and then we can take him home."

Lucio's words came without fear, or hesitation and with an edge to them that Roadhog hadn't heard before. Junkrat was going to literally feed a ship to Misreported and Lucio was in full support.

"How," Roadhog let a little more of his weight settle in the water.  _ Hylinea  _ settled more firmly on her waterline. "And why the hell did you let them take him?" That question tore itself out in a growl before he could think about what he was saying.

In response, Lucio moved so fast Roadhog was too startled to stop him when Lucio clapped one hand roughly to the side of Roadhog's mask and wrenched it back so Lucio could see his eyes.

"We are taking him back," Lucio snarled. He was leaning in to Roadhog, crowding into his space with one hand still tight on the mako skin, fingers tight in Roadhog's white hair. "He's not gone, he just needs a ride. He told me to run because how else would you know where to go to get him? I know how we're going to take him back, I know that the people who took him are about to die, and you're going to to help me because you love him and I think you've got a lot to fucking say to him yet right? So calm down and listen to what I got to tell you."

Roadhog had never heard Lucio's voice drop instead of raise when he wanted to say something. He'd never known Lucio to crowd him, he'd seen him this fearless, never known Lucio to offer any violence.

Some of Lucio’s anger, or maybe just his certainty, cut through the panicked deseration of Roadhog's mind. He let  _ Hylinea  _ settle as he slipped back into the water.

"How? How do we take him out of Misreported."

"You told Junkrat how you could breath underwater right?"

Roadhog nodded, and Lucio took a breath, and his certainty wavered for half a second.

"Were you lying when you told him?"

Roadhog shook his head slowly. He wasn't sure what it was that kept him breathing when he was underwater, but the tooth he'd taken from a dying bull shark’s mouth hadn't killed him for the last century or more.

"Can you do it to Junkrat?"

Roadhog realized what Lucio was asking, and pulled his head back slightly until Lucio loosed his grip on the mako skin. The idea had occurred to him, and Roadhog had been savagely suppressing it ever since. Selfish of him, stupid and petty and thoughtless to try and offer Junkrat the same self enforced prison he'd given himself.

"I don't need to know how you do it, I just want you to tell me you can."

"Yes," Roadhog growled, "But I won't."

Lucio sat back, the anger evaporating in one bleak, frustrated moment of confusion. "Why?"

A thousand reasons raced through Roadhog’s mind but all he said was, "He would be like me."

He’d rather that then dead, Roadhog. All of us would rather him be like you than dead." 

The flat tone was unfamiliar to Roadhog, something else unexpected from Lucio who was always confident, always had a plan.

Roadhog wrestled with himself then admitted, "I can make him breathe."

Lucio's shoulders dropped slightly with relief, and he sat forward again, conspiring and quiet while he took a breath before he began.

It was nearly dawn, and there was a mist hanging low over the water as the eastern horizon went grey green, with a band of pink at the water. Roadhog had really, really been hoping to spend the day with Junkrat and Lucio on the beach.

"There's underwater rivers under the banks," Lucio said, and Roadhog blinked, because this was the first he'd heard of them. "There’s one course that drains into Misreported’s basin."

Roadhog stared at Lucio. He felt naked with his mask still thrust up over his head and his face uncovered. Lucio looked perfectly composed. 

"How do you know there's fresh water rivers under the ocean?" Roadhog didn't think Lucio was lying, because he didn't think Lucio would lie to him at a time like this, but he didn't see how they'd exist.

"Not the ocean, a sixty feet deep sand bank on a long reach of sandstone near an island with a freshwater spring and an active sea monster who grew up on the island and needed a way out." Before Roadhog could go on, Lucio cut him off, "I've gone cave diving with Lena."

Roadhog stared balefully at Lucio, "I've never seen the mouth of a river near there."

"They're inside Misreported's Basin."

Roadhog blinked. But that made sense. The basin wasn't natural, it had to have been made. By something that needed to get out to open water.

"I told you I'd seen Misreported before." Lucio said quietly. He was staring at Roadhog with cool, flatly unshakable resolve.

"You want me to take Junkrat into Misreported's basin." Roadhog thought of Lucio, five-foot-nothing Lucio in the water next to the huge, deadly, hungry bulk of Misreported. He studied the kid, and remembered that Lucio didn't go diving with Junkrat much anymore, remembered that Lucio was wary of Roadhog in the water. Remembered that knowing how to swim in dark water without edges was a cruel way to die.

"I'm telling you that the only way you're going to get onto the banks around the basin is to follow Misreported up after Junkrat wakes it,” Lucio said. He was talking fast and hard, pushing his determination at Roadhog. It was infectious.

The plan was simple, and it would work, and Roadhog was surprised even if he shouldn't have been that Lucio was able to come up with it in the hours since Junkrat was taken. He knew Junkrat, and knew what he was probably going to do, and that helped a lot. Roadhog realized as he listened to Lucio's fast, succinct explanation that this wasn't the first time Lucio had been able to pull Junkrat out of trouble.

"How do we get off the island," Roadhog asked, because Misreported wasn't going to suffer another ship over it's banks, not after what Lucio assumed Junkrat would do to it.  Even if they left on the opposite side of the island, they'd have to run for miles along the edge of the banks and loop back around before they would be clear of it's territory. They would have to have something ocean worthy, something bigger than  _ Hylinea _ .

Lucio told him, and was watching when Roadhog snorted with brief, rueful laughter.

"You knew I was lying when I told you it attacked all ships." Roadhog was usually so absorbed in Junkrat, in every one of his expressions and schemes and gestures and touches, he was sometimes taken aback by Lucio. Lucio had a sharpness to him, some level of awareness that had made Roadhog uneasy before.

"I know it attacks anything with an engine, I bet it attacked anything with canons. But that means it hunts by sound. And that means we just have to be quiet. It'll never attack  _ Thunderer _ . I radioed to them hours ago. They’re already on their way." Lucio said, smiling at Roadhog and relaxing a little now that Roadhog seemed calmer with a plan to hold Junkrat in his mind.

The rest of that day had passed in a whirl of suppressed panic coming at Roadhog from all sides. He went over the plan with Lucio, he came up out of the water to assure Lucio the plan would work, be fielded Lucio’s shock and went with him when  _ Thunderer  _ came for them. The day passed. Lucio knew where Junkrat would be. Roadhog could get to him. Junkrat would trust in them both. It was going to be fine, it was all going to work. 

It made Roadhog savage to see Junkrat dangling like chum off the other driver, the weight belt rubbing his skin raw, his heartbeat panic fast. Roadhog had watched, safe inside a niche in Misreported's basin and holding himself still while the huge monster slept on below him, as Junkrat dragged off the makeshift dive platform before he was ready. Junkrat hadn't gone diving without Roadhog since he lost his arm, and in all that time, Roadhog had been careful to stay within touching distance, just in case.

Junkrat had hung lifeless in the water, his heart hammering hard enough for Roadhog to feel it from so far away. He growled back in response, and knew as he did, Junkrat was probably too far to hear him.

Fortunately Junkrat was predictable, for a given value of predictability. He laid his explosives exactly where Lucio had told Roadhog he would, and they would more than wake Misreported. They might actually hurt it.

Roadhog was hiding in the cave upriver with Lucio's dive light for company when the blast went off above him and there was a surge and blast of water past him, frothing hard and fast upstream. Then Misreported woke, and roared in the long, low thunder of rage and there was another blast of water as the monster swarmed up out of its den and up into open water and Roadhog chased after it. 

By the time Roadhog had reached the open water above of the basin, the groaning of tearing metal and the muffled screaming of people about to die was almost deafening. The huge ship the Junker's had rode over the swell on was nearly torn apart as he watched, sinking reluctantly with a column of bubbles racing for the wildy choppy white surface. The water was full of the thrashing, terrified Junkers as they floated and sank and struggled everywhere around him. The water was cloudy with sand and darker than it had been the day Roadhog had been lost at sea but even still, for a few horrible moments, Roadhog was back in his old body all those years ago, sinking over the banks with his dying crew around him. 

Misreported had been there then, too. 

Junkrat was here. Somewhere. The thought snapped Roadhog back to the present. Back to the terror and dread and hope. There were too many heartbeats to track anyone in particular. Roadhog looked around wildly, fear making his heart pound in his throat because Misreported was moving, a long, dark streak in the water, six or seven times bigger than the dying ship and people were being snapped out of the water all around him. Little snaps and ruptures and bursts of blood in the water. Roadhog couldn't hear Junkrat's heartbeat.

But he could taste him. There was blood in the water, a long trail of it, and a long streak of sun stained skin falling fast through the water, blood billowing above him as he sank. Junkrat falling towards Misreported, lunging up towards him.

The throw Roadhog made with his old anchor was purely instinct. His heart had stopped and his skin had gone cold and his mind had gone blank with dread as Misreported's mouth had opened in a black void fringed in white teeth and shot towards his Junkrat. He felt the fluke of his anchor lock around Junkrat’s skinny body and he yanked hard on the line. 

Then Junkrat was against him, and Roadhog thought if he had been able to, he'd have pressed Junkrat inside him for safe keeping, pull him in where nothing could hurt him ever again. His tail curled awkwardly up to try and cover Junkrat, trying to hold the skinny, shaking body where nothing could reach him. His fingers were probably leaving bruises. His heart was pounding and Junkrat was alive and warm and safe in his arms. Roadhog spared one hand and twisted the lock on Junkrat’s weight belt until it broke in his fingers and fifty pounds of lead dropped away from them. 

Misreported shot by over his head, turning gracefully in the water to right itself and snap up another struggling, panicked body in the water. Another visceral crunch of bone and burst of blood into the water. Another terrified heartbeat shredded to nothing.

Roadhog pushed a kiss into Junkrat's shoulder, feeling the rapid pulse under his lips, reminding himself that Junkrat was fine, he was fine, reminding himself that Misreported wasn't going to get him, not this one.

Unless Junkrat drowned here, in Roadhog's arms because Roadhog was too panicked and flustered and furious to actually do what he'd planned. He nuzzled anxiously against Junkrat's neck, reaching up to his mask and breaking one of the mako shark's teeth out of it's mouth and tipped Junkrat's head towards him, holding the little tooth carefully in his trembling fingers. Junkrat, eager and bewildered with his heart hammering reached around for Roadhog too, leaning up and twisting desperately, chasing a kiss. 

Roadhog gratefully kissed him back hard, pushed a breath into Junkrat’s open mouth, willed Junkrat to breath it in, live a little longer, just in case what Roadhog was doing to him wouldn't work, wouldn't take; it didn't always. Junkrat started in his arms, letting Roadhog breath for both of them and twisting around a little more, baring his bloody neck and trying to pull himself closer to Roadhog.

The point of the mako tooth in Roadhog's hands found the smooth edge of raised skin where a sharp knife had slashed through Junkrat's neck and into the muscle. Roadhog felt his own heart skip a beat, more hope and longing and desperation than he'd ever felt piling in a jagged, unfamiliar tangle in his throat as he kissed Junkrat more for luck than breath and pushed the jagged little mako tooth down into Junkrat's skin.

Roadhog  felt the skin of Junkrat's neck close under his fingertips. The slash becoming a fine white scar, like a hidden line on a contract.

Relief crashed through Roadhog, hot and fast and clean and he was already gathering himself even as Junkrat flinched back, struggling briefly but not away from Roadhog. Both his hands flew to the place on his neck where gills should be, where Roadhog remembered his own skin burning with something unfamiliar.

Misreported was a long dark streak in the water, moving fast, darting and diving and arcing around the last of the humans struggling in the water above them. The rusted ship the Junkers had sailed in was hanging just off the sandy bottom now, some unbroken pocket of air in it's bow keeping it's head up like a stubborn toddler unwilling to sleep. 

Junkrat was hot and still and shaking in his arms, staring at the water around them and Roadhog gathered him in close and stretched out and slashed his tail through the water. He didn't bother to slow himself, didn't bother to coddle Junkrat or limit his movements. He usually did when Junkrat or Lucio were around, he didn't want them to see him as fast or powerful as he was. He liked having their company, held their trust like a fragile thing, because surely it had to be based on their assumption he was capable of keeping his strength leashed around them.

But at least he was here now, even if this was the time Junkrat learned to fear Roadhog. At least for now, Junkrat was alive and warm and breathing underwater with his heart hammering and clinging to Roadhog and staring around in the water as Misreported lunged for them and Roadhog adroitly skimmed up, letting the massive old monster pass harmlessly under him. He'd explain everything later, apologize later, tell Junkrat everything he wanted to know, answer any question he might ask as long as Junkrat stayed close enough for Roadhog to touch him, close enough that Roadhog could keep an eye on him without fighting to breathe.

He didn't care now, he wanted Junkrat safe and out of here and he wasn't as fast as Misreported but he could outmaneuver it. It lunged at them, over a hundred feet of lithe, tooth tipped projectile arcing through the water and striking out like a snake. Roadhog surged up and Misreported shot under him, the gust of water it raised enough to buffed him slightly. He turned, arched and dove. Misreported flicked away in the water above him, found another target, and snapped its huge jaws down on another terrified Junker.

Junkrat's heart was beating fast, and there was no more blood in the water around them, and he was clinging to Roadhog so hard it nearly hurt.

He swam them up the underground river, through the cleft of spring water that came from the unnamed island. Lucio had been right about the underwater rivers, there was a veritable delta under the banks, enough that there was real danger of getting lost. Lucio's dive light was still shining ahead of him though, guiding him back. Roadhog tried to marshal an explanation, an apology, questions and demands all tangling in the fear and fury and relief and anxiety snarled in a knot in Roadhog's throat.

Their heads broke the surface into the little cave, the first time they were able to speak since Roadhog had cupped the back of Junkrat's head yesterday. He couldn't find a word to say.

But it didn't matter, because Junkrat laughed up at him, and accepted the tooth in the side of his neck, accepted Roadhogs panic and terror and anger. He took all that in stride as easily as he'd taken everything else Roadhog had presented to him.

Roadhog let Junkrat push him back against the rocks of the cave wall. The world looked bigger outside of his mask. It was always righter in a way he was probably going to have to get used to. That mask was probably going to pass to Junkrat soon. But not now. He hung it aside carefully, quashing his fear because he didn't want Junkrat to take it now, couldn't allow that before it was time but Junkrat didn't seem to mind.

"Careful," Roadhog said again, quietly this time, because he didn't really need to. They were safe here and the death in the salt water above them wasn't their problem anymore. Junkrat had killed the Junkers and sunk their ship in one move, and been able to survive because he'd known Roadhog and Lucio would come for him. He'd done everything right, they all had.

"I am sorry to scare you like that mate," Junkrat murmured. He had his eyes shut and his head down, leaning over Roadhog with his wet hair trailing to one side. "I was scared too."

Roadhog just shook his head and scuffed one hand over Junkrat's hair. Junkrat went still above him, but Roadhog was starting to understand when Junkrat went still around him, it wasn't from fear.

"We're alright," Roadhog said quietly, "Lucio's scared too though."

"In a minute," Junkrat rode over the guilt of leaving Lucio to wonder if they were both dead in Misreported basin and sighed as Roadhog tentatively slipped his hand back over Junkrat's head and cupped the back of his neck. "Hoggy," Junkrat started, then opened his eyes and blinked.

He always seemed taken aback when Roadhog didn't have his mask on, he'd lose his train of thought staring at Roadhog's bare face, study his eyes. Lucio would too, but not as much.

"I can't wear my mask right now," Roadhog growed, part self conscious and part regretfully. It was too risky to have the skin too close to Junkrat now.

"Don't care," Junkrat dismissed the mask. "Like it when you don't wear it Hog."

Roadhog blinked, opened his mouth, then shut it again, tilting his head.

Junkrat just grinned at him, relief and delight and the same warm, slightly wild look that Junkrat got whenever he looked at Roadhog.

"Kiss me," Roadhog heard himself say, and it surprised him because he'd gotten good at keeping those words back, he'd found ways to keep that request to himself. He hadn't known the words were going to slip out of him now, after being held back for so long.

It didn't matter though, since Junkrat looked thunderstruck for a second, mouth open, eyes wide. then he leant down and kissed Roadhog hard, pushing him back and down and leaning into him. Roadhog grunted in mingled surprise and relief and opened his mouth under Junkrat, leaning back until he was pressed down the rough slope of the rock behind him, his head against the rock with the water of the river pressing on the back of his neck and shoulders, his chest and belly out of the water, his tail trailing light and easy in the current. Junkrat made a little whine and licked into Roadhog’s mouth, fast and eager and then back like he didn't know what he wanted more; deeping the kiss, or Roadhog’s tongue in his mouth.

"Didn't know if you wanted..." Junkrat started, about to lean back, some thought occurring to him which had apparently been able to distract him.

"Junkrat," Roadhog murmured, not letting Junkrat lean back with one hand on the back of Junkrat's neck and the other spread over his back. Their lips dragged together as he spoke and neither seemed to want to move away. There was heat and salt water between them. "'Rat, I've wanted to kiss you since you started stealing from my territory." He spoke low, a growl in his chest that would echo in Junkrat's, they were pressed together too close for the sound not to carry by touch. Junkrat shivered. "Wanted you to kiss me since you found me beached in the tide pools. I always want to ask you to kiss me."

"Say it more often?" It was a request, but came out breathless and a little rushed, Junkrat still had his eyes closed, his lips moving over Roadhog's mouth. "I mean, mate, I don't need an excuse to kiss ya, but I'll take any prompting because honestly if you'd mentioned that before I'd have been a little faster on the uptake here I was thinking I was just a..."

"Rat," Roadhog said, the low rumble in his chest just hedging on irritation. "You don't have to convince me."

"Right," Junkrat gasped in a breath and shuddered, his hands were tight over Roadhog's arms. They tightened briefly and then he seemed to shake himself. "Open your mouth Roadhog," Junkrat whispered into him.

Roadhog opened his mouth and pressed up as Junkrat bit back a noise and kissed down into him, tipping his head a little to one side to push them closer. Roadhog felt the long, low rumble of contentment in his chest more than he heard it. He acted purely on some base instinct and pushed Junkrat more firmly against his chest, letting the noise buzz between them.

“Fuck," Junkrat hissed into him. "'Hog..." Then he broke off sharply with a gasp when Roadhog didn't let up, just used the spread hand on Junkrat’s back to grind their bodies together. 

"Fuck," Junkrat squirmed briefly, eyes shut again and mouth open. He was spread over Roadhog's body, and apparently hadn't considered how easy it would be for Roadhog to manhandle him like that.

"What to go find Lucio yet?" Roadhog asked softly, talking into Junkrat's ear and keeping one hand firmly on the back of Junkrat's neck.

"He'll be fine," Junkrat managed, "just fine, he always is," then he gasped and shuddered as another press of Roadhog's hands brought Junkrat’s hips and abdomen into the swell of Roadhog's belly again. "Hooley... Hog, you're strong."

Roadhog just snorted because this was the first demonstration of his strength that Junkrat seemed to have noticed. He gripped Junkrat's skinny waist again and pulled him down again, not needing to roll up into the press of the long body. The wet fabric of Junkrat's shorts rubbed slow and heavy over Roadhog's belly and he could feel Junkrat was hard inside the wet canvas, probably chaffing unbelievably.

Junkrat groaned and tension seemed to shudder out of him. Roadhog stayed quiet and watched as he tightened the hand at the back of Junkrat's neck.

"Tighter," Junkrat whispered. His hands were still on Roadhog's arms, the metal hand shockingly cold, the one of blood and bone and flesh twitching and trembling. "Tighter, 'Hog, I like your hands on me."

Carefully, drinking in Junkrat shuddering out tension and losing himself in the slow, grinding pace Roadhog was moving him to, Roadhog tightened the hand over the back of Junkrat's neck. Junkrat put his head down abruptly, losing the wiry strength to keep his head up like he was ready for a fight, and that little unconscious surrender made Roadhog's breath catch.

"Mm," Junkrat nipped absently at Roadhog's shoulder, his teeth barely catching, his tongue hot and messy, absently mouthing the same patch of skin. "Yeah, more of that, Hog, bit harder." He shivered as Roadhog slowly tightened his grip on his neck and around his waist. "More, more, keep grinding me to you, Hog." Junkrat murmured. He shuddered again, his warm left hand twitching on Roadhog's arm. 

Roadhog used the grip on him to drag Junkrat up against his wide belly again, hardest time yet, and Junkrat spread his thighs a little wider around him and whimpered.

He kept his grip constant, kept moving slow and steady, kept giving Junkrat all the signals and control he knew how to. Kept waiting for a noise or a movement of fear or pain or uncertainty, waiting for Junkrat to remember he was being manhandled by a monster twice his size. Kept waiting for his own voice of conscience to remind him that he’d been trying not to do this until he’d told Junkrat about the Skin, about his past. 

Junkrat just moaned though, soft and eager and happy, and Roadhog’s conscious kept its damn mouth shut.

Junkrat's voice was a little breathless and hoarse, his breath hot on Roadhog's collar bone a minute or so later. "Can you fuck me?"

His hands twitched tighter and Junkrat's hips gave an involuntary little stutter, some desperate need driving him to rut against Roadhog's sharkskin belly. He bit back a whine and went still.

"Do you want me to?" The question was a low growl, Roadhog dragging the words out one by one because he'd never thought he'd be asked this. He never thought he'd be here, never thought Junkrat would go with him so far. Never thought he'd give into this and now he already had.

"Yes," Junkrat said unhesitatingly. His hands tightened deliberately, and his teeth dragged over Roadhog's neck as he went on. "I want you to fuck me open, Hoggy. I want everything you've got." Roadhog dragged Junkrat's skinny body up against him again in the same slow grind they'd both been enjoying. Junkrat's hips thrust weakly against Roadhog again, unable to do much with Roadhog gripping him so tight. "Want your hands on me while you do, want you to leave marks and open me up and make sure I can't breath from screaming."

Roadhog fought to keep his own breathing even, trying to reign in his imagination and expectations. "Junkrat," he forced his voice steady, trying to find words to point out an obvious physiological incompatibility. "I'm half shark."

"Look, I can take one dick until I can take both, right, mate?" Junkrat managed to sound blasie, even while breathless, trembling, and being held down with his thighs open and his dick in wet canvas riding hard up Roadhog's belly.

Roadhog choked on his next breath and he went to shove Junkrat back because after a statement like that Roadhog really wanted to look Junkrat in the eye and ask him if he was serious.

"Don't stop," Junkrat groaned, fighting to stay down, curled over Roadhog and edging his thighs further apart. "Just think about it, us, lying here like this, with your cock inside me and you fuckin' me down on it instead of just...."

Roadhog snarled briefly, and pulled Junkrat hard against him, dragging Junkrat's hips up his belly fast and hard to shut his little trespasser up. It was already a struggle not to think about exactly what Junkrat was describing and the tension it was taking was greater than he'd expected. It would be so easy to tear the wet shorts off Junkrat and hold him open and fuck him raw and screaming because Junkrat wouldn't stop him even if he could.

"Not here," Roadhog growled at himself. Junkrat whined in disappointment and Roadhog panted briefly, grinding Junkrat's trembling body against himself. Junkrat had let almost all his strength drain out of his limbs. He was loose and soft over Roadhog, content as long as Roadhog kept him exactly where he was. "Not like this."

"Like what then," Junkrat huffed a little breath and squirmed against the ready strength of Roadhog's grip. "Tighter, come on, Hoggy, hold me down."

Roadhog tightened his grip until Junkrat gasped and his thighs shook and his hips gave another helpless, desperate little jerk against him. "Come here," Roadhog muttered, and tipped his head to the side and kissed him. 

It was hard and slow and Junkrat wanted faster and harder and fought to get in control. He wanted his tongue in Roadhog's mouth, wanted his teeth in Roadhog's lip, wanted everything and Roadhog patiently kept his pace. Kept his pace until he could suck at Junkrat's lip and worry it gently with his teeth, until he had his tongue in Junkrat's mouth and Junkrat was helplessly following his every prompt. Until he was overwhelmed and drunk on everything Roadhog was doing to him. Until Junkrat was whimpering at every pull and press Roadhog's belly, sucking hard and uncoordinated on Roadhog's tongue in his mouth, with both hands jerking and twitching on Roadhog's arms.

The water was cold on his human skin and felt like nothing on his shark skin and Junkrat was hot everywhere he touched him now.

Junkrat flinched back suddenly his body jerking from sleepy laxness to fighting tension, and Roadhog stopped and eased his grip and broke the kiss in alarm.

"No," Junkrat hissed, shuddering and forcing the words out through his teeth. "No, 'Hog, tighter. Didn't think I'd... Fuck, Hog, please don't stop...."

Roadhog leaned up quickly, stealing a kiss, before he tightened his grip, pulled him back in firmly and began jerking Junkrat's hips into his belly in tight little thrusts.

Junkrat shut his eyes and dropped his head and panted with his mouth open. He fought Roadhog's grip on him this time and trying to force himself to be closer, to move faster and whining near agonized desperation when Roadhog held him tighter, didn't let him change his pace, just kept him moving, hard and quick and too fast this time.

Roadhog watched him when he came, saw the instant his eyes flashed open in surprise alarm, uncertainty, then Junkrat cried out and pushed his open mouth into Roadhog's shoulder, arching desperately up into Roadhog's grip and going loose and limp again, letting Roadhog move him, shuddering with every thrust and biting and mouthing and panting against the salty skin of Roadhog's neck.

"Please," Junkrat managed, he shook his head briefly and Roadhog stopped. He eased his grip and stroked his hand down Junkrat's back, from nape to the dip in his lower back, pressing him down and into himself. He looped his other arm under Junkrat's ass, anchoring him in place, keeping his thighs spread and his spent, softening dick pressed to Roadhog's belly.

Roadhog stroked down his back again, keeping his hand gentle but heavy. "Junkrat," Roadhog said softly, and growled low in his chest and into the long skinny body above him. He nuzzled his head sideways into Junkrat's, and kept his breathing slow and steady, until Junkrat's panting breaths slowed, then matched his, breath for breath.

"Didn't think that'd actually set me off," Junkrat managed after a while. Every so often, one of his limbs would twitch, even the metal ones, which surprised Roadhog though perhaps it shouldn't have. "Really wanted you to fuck me, Hoggy," Junkrat groaned. "I haven't cum from rutting since I was a bloody teenager."

"I bring out the worst in you," Roadhog snorted, trying to be consoling and failing miserably.

"You bring out something, mate, I'll give you that." Junkrat was quiet for a while, lolling in apparent contentment as Roadhog kept up his slow, heavy strokes, nape to lower back, and again, nape to back. "Hog, what did you mean you didn't want to fuck me like this?"

"I mean trying to take both of what a bull shark has is idiotic," Roadhog pointed out briefly. He hadn't... tried on anything other than his own hand. He hadn't wanted to before. But he was reasonably sure that it wouldn't be easy on anyone.

"I've always been ambitious," Junkrat replied automatically.

"I'd rather if I was myself," Roadhog went on without thinking, and Junkrat's breathing hitched. Roadhog could feel Junkrat actually blink against the side of his neck. Roadhog realized, a beat too late, what he'd said and tensed, then sighed a little.

"What's that, mate?"

"At least the first time," Roadhog went on, riding straight over the question. "Can you move?"

"You ask that like you ain’t going to carry me anyway," Junkrat smiled and pressed a kiss into Roadhog's shoulder. "Yeah, I want to tell Lucio about how I got to see Misreported before he did."

"A little too closely," Roadhog growled. He eased himself up from the rocks and Junkrat tensed suddenly around him.

"What about you?" Junkrat’s voice stopped him cold.

Roadhog remembered the visceral feel of Junkrat going lax and open in his hands, moving where Roadhog moved him and asking Roadhog to fuck him. He swallowed hard and collected himself with an effort. 

He shook his head. "Not what we're here for." Which gave the impression, the not entirely incorrect impression, that what they were here for was for Roadhog to get his hands on Junkrat and not let go, even after Junkrat had cum in his wet shorts and was still shuddering from the chaff and friction.

"Let me..." Junkrat started and Roadhog sat up, jostling Junkrat into the water with a splash with his hands on Junkrat's shoulders.

Whatever Junkrat wanted to do would snap the fine thread of self control that Roadhog was already hanging a few years worth of feelings from. His self control that was already worn from the terror of nearly losing his diver forever.

"After," Roadhog growled. It was a promise, to both of them, and while it was enough for him, Junkrat looked like he needed more. Roadhog managed to speak before Junkrat could appeal. "Junkrat, Lucio's still waiting."

Junkrat opened his mouth, then shut it and pulled himself up to kiss Roadhog again. They were pressed together again, chest to belly with their wet hair hanging in hanks around them both. "After," Junkrat said, and Roadhog nodded.

He yanked his anchor from the wall and wondered if it was safe to bring the mask, or if it would be too close to Junkrat.

"Don't touch the mask," he allowed at last and pulled it on over his head. Junkrat shrugged and accepted the new rule as easily as he seemed to accept everything about Roadhog.

He took Lucio’s little white dive light, and opened his arms so Junkrat could pull himself into him, letting Roadhog wrap him up and hold him, the hand holding his anchor tucked along Junkrat's back. "Hold onto me," Roadhog said, his voice was pitched low. He was already swimming up stream towards where their little cave ended and the water came rushing out from under a shelf of stone. "It's going to be dark."

"I ain't letting go," Junkrat said, and shuddered again. "Hoggy, next time we do this let’s be somewhere warm right?"

Roadhog grunted, stifling a smile as Junkrat clung to him and tucked his tucked his head up under Roadhog's chin. He dove, and Junkrat held his breath for a few seconds before he cautiously let it out and found he wasn't going to drown.

That had been the only risk in the plan, and when he'd explained it, Lucio had just shrugged it off like it wouldn't be a problem.

"Junkrat won't reject the tooth, the magic, the magic gills, whatever it is," Lucio said when Roadhog insisted, snarling up at him, to take this seriously. Lucio hadn't backed down an inch, but chattered down into his face with equal ferocity. "He won't turn aside anything from the sea, he's not going to turn down anything from you."

Lucio was a lot more observant than Roadhog had allowed. It still surprised him after all this time, that Lucio knew them both so well.

The underground river was wide enough to swim comfortably, even if it was freshwater, and Roadhog could feel himself struggling to stay as buoyant as he was in salt. He could survive in freshwater though, bull sharks could last in rivers and estuaries when others couldn't. He hadn't know that when he'd taken his new skin, but he'd been grateful for it when he'd began exploring.

Junkrat shuddered in the cold and tucked himself a little more firmly against Roadhog, his eyes shut and his face pressed to Roadhog’s chest. The darkness of this small, trapped river pressed in on them from the edges of Lucio's dive light. The little lantern cast a tiny glow around them, only a few feet in every direction. On the edges of the light, things moved in the darkness, hurrying away or swimming alongside. Pale fins and eyes glowed briefly as he passed them, and he kept his eyes forward and tightened his arm around Junkrat. Lucio had already been here, with Lena, the little slip of a runner Roadhog had seen him skating alongside on the boardwalk. The two of them were tiny to him, and they’d been here. 

The river sloped upwards, then gradually became almost vertical and Roadhog had to lean into the current to swim upstream against the force of the water falling past him. It was slow, and heavy work, and the darkness wasn't whole when he had a moment to spare to look around him. He turned a wide corner and saw in the darkness above him the bright, wavering disk of light that was the spring on the unnamed island.

His head broke the surface and Junkrat gasped and coughed and tucked his head back in under Roadhog's chin and pushed a hot, sucking a little bite to his collar bone. "Did it, Hog."

Roadhog was panting, his heart beating hard and fast as he struggled against the current past the edge of drop off where the shallow, fast waters of the circular pool dropped away in fits and starts to the yawning mouth of the tunnel that could carry him straight back to Misreported's den. Junkrat found he could touch bottom on the pool's surface and stepped down, leaning into the current and moving towards shore. He made no effort to shake Roadhog's hand off his side. Roadhog wasn't letting go of Junkrat until he was well on shore and away from the drop off.

"Roadhog!  _ Junkrat _ !"

They both looked up to see Lucio sprinting down the hillside towards them from the shade of a palm tree up the slope.

Junkrat perked up when he heard Lucio, and shouted back at him. Lucio put his head down and charged along the steep slope of the hill, sprinting directly at them, before he jumped and cleared the last ten feet in a flying tackle that caught Junkrat and slammed them back into Roadhog. Junkrat hooted with laughter and hugged Lucio back, while Roadhog sat awkwardly in the shallows of the pool, with Junkrat lying over him and Lucio lying over them both. Lucio had one arm around each of them, hugging Roadhog as tightly as Junkrat, and Junkrat and Lucio were both talking excitedly over each other.

"Shore, both of you. Hey, Lucio," Roadhog carefully settled his hand on Lucio's back. He was even smaller than Junkrat. "Shore, get to shore."

"You got him, you're okay, I knew you would be, but," Lucio beamed at him, but his cheeks were wet despite the dry, windy day and his eyes were reddish. His headphones were still beating out music, too loud to possibly be comfortable. He hugged Roadhog, a quick, hard, one armed hug that surprised Roadhog with its ferocity. "Thank you."

"We got him back," Roadhog murmured butting his head gently against the side of Lucio's and letting his hand settle a little more easily on Lucio's back. He felt guilty for having kept Lucio waiting, although given Lucio's perception, he might easily be able to tell why they were so long.

"I knew you'd do it," Junkrat was beaming at Lucio when they pulled apart slightly. "Course you sorted everything."

"Like I always do," Lucio said with pleased confidence. He hadn't let go of Junkrat or Roadhog yet, and they hadn't let go of him either. The three of them sat in the shallows of the pool holding onto one another.

At Roadhog's second quiet prompting, Lucio helped Junkrat to shore and they climbed out onto the scruffy grass and Junkrat hugged Lucio properly. It was good to see them together again, see how much they had needed to be back together. Roadhog took a quiet moment to watch them, enjoy things as they were in case this was the end. 

He took a breath, held it, and the bull shark slid off easily when Roadhog pulled it free of his legs. It never hurt when he shed this adopted skin, it just left an unnerving, hollow feeling in his chest. Like a lost tooth; something missing he felt anxious over, even as feeling returned to his legs. 

Junkrat tensed suddenly, a thought occurring to him and turned back to the pool without letting go off Lucio. 

"Wait, we can't leave Roadhog to go back..." Junkrat looked like he was ready to get back in the pool instead of leave Roadhog apparently stranded. He looked like he was about to dare Roadhog to try and stop him from following him all the way back out to Misreported's den if that was the route Roadhog had to take.

Roadhog forestalled him by standing up and stepping out of the pool with two shark skins draped over one arm.

Junkrat's jaw dropped. Lucio, who had walked with Roadhog to the pool earlier this morning, was watching Junkrat with cautious and unbroken attention.

“You're bloody," Junkrat sputtered. He let go of Lucio and backed a step, then couldn't seem to find anything else to say. "You're...."

Roadhog joined Lucio and Junkrat, letting fresh spring water drip out of the hem of his shredded pants and pour out of his ruined boots. "Told you," he said in his low growl, wary and anxious of Junkrat's obvious amazement. Lucio had barely managed to accept the reality of Roadhog’s two forms. If the situation hadn’t been so rushed, he might not have, and he’d been unsure how Junkrat would react. "I got the tattoo before."

Junkrat's eyes dropped to Roadhog's belly, and he blinked at the whole of the tattoo. "You were human, before."

Roadhog nodded. Junkrat was still studying every inch of him.

"You... you're still bloody enormous." Junkrat managed. 

Roadhog snorted and nodded again. He was shorter as a human than he was long as a merman, but he kept his size and was still over seven feet tall.

"I said the same thing this morning when he walked up onto the beach," Lucio remarked.

Junkrat swung to face Lucio, then back up to Roadhog, who carefully kept his distance. Junkrat had known him as a sea monster who couldn't follow him to land, and there was a good possibility Junkrat liked having that barrier between them.

"You can go on land?" Junkrat said, starting over from the beginning.

"It's what I was doing when you found me," Roadhog shifted the shark skins awkwardly on his arm and shook his head to clear his hair from his eyes. Which did nothing since his hair was soaking wet. He shoved it back in a long messy stroke. "I was-." He nearly said he'd been looking for Junkrat, that he'd still been mourning him after thinking him dead for a year, then realized the tension in this conversation probably couldn't hold an admission like that. “Heading to town for boba and ice cream."

"Boba," Junkrat repeated. He reached out to him and paused, glancing up at Roadhog for a moment. Apparently all it took for Junkrat to learn some respect for personal space was for Roadhog to become an actual person.

He sighed, and didn't move, and Junkrat touched the edges of the tattoo over Roadhog's belly.

"You're human," Junkrat said quietly. Something about the set of his shoulders, or the lightness of his touch, made a sudden impression on Roadhog, something about him made him think that Junkrat was actually shy, for the first time Roadhog had ever seen. "Why didn't..." Junkrat started, then stopped himself and shook his head.

"Well, good to meet you, again, mate," Junkrat said, and drew back a little.

Roadhog felt his heart sink, he kept quiet and still and wondered how badly he'd fucked up this time. Lucio was watching Junkrat with a thoughtful little scowl and Junkrat was staring at the battered bull shark skin over Roadhog's arm, the newer mako skin mask looked small beside it.

"Wait," Junkrat started again, "How are we getting off the island? Can't take anything with an engine anywhere near..."

"Taken care of," Lucio said and cocked his head as he started to walk backwards, leading them on.

They walked around the fringed of sand on the island, circling until the sea over Misreported’s banks were behind them, and kept on around to the north side of the island. Lucio led the way, and Junkrat was uncharacteristically quiet as he followed with Roadhog trailing behind him, struggling to stay above his rising misery and anxiety.

He'd known it was a risk, showing himself out of his skin, so he hadn't wanted to tell Junkrat or bring it up. He wasn't human anymore, and the years that had gone by while he was under the water only reinforced that. And while Junkrat had been delighted to have a monster in his party, he might not welcome a human man, who could follow him onto shore, who might want more than casual working together and diving for gold and stollen, risky, underwater kisses.

"Why didn't you say?" Junkrat asked, and the words startled Roadhog out of his depths.

He grunted, and blinked at Junkrat, who studied Roadhog's eyes briefly and looked away again.

"You can take your skin off, you never said," Junkrat clarified. They were still following Lucio, in the mingled shade of the palms in the scruffy rough cut where the pebbly granite soil became sandy beach. The grass was short and saw edged and prickled at his toes through his boots. His human body was disconcertingly oversensitive after he took his skin off. 

Roadhog shrugged. He should have. That was perfectly clear now. "Didn't think you'd need to know." Which wasn't a lie.

"I did," Junkrat snapped, then seemed to shake himself.

Ahead of them, a line of tension went down Lucio's back. The boy tensed like a sprinter whenever there was about to be a fight.

Junkrat saw it too, and stopped himself from whatever had been gathering on the tip of his tongue. "None of my business." He muttered, and Lucio kept walking without having broken stride, but he relaxed again.

Roadhog thought of the nebulous riot of real answers, and stayed quiet. It was simple really, he reflected. He'd just wanted to be a monster to Junkrat and Lucio. Just an anonymous thing with a nickname and a skillset they could rely on. He didn’t want to be the person he had been, not to them. 

"I'd have," Junkrat started again, and then paused, struggling while he tried to pick his next words. "Did you think I'd..." He tried again, gave up and then stopped. He stood on the sandy grass beside a leaning palm with the ocean to one side and smooth stoney pink slope of the hill through the palms on his other and stared down. Lucio kept on walking, Roadhog slowed, and turned to face him.

"Did you think I'd put you in harm's way, Hog?" Junkrat said slowly. He sounded like he was feeling his way into his question. "You kept the secret because you didn't trust us?"

"I do," Roadhog said so abruptly that Junkrat started and looked up at him. The idea that his reluctance to show himself as human came from thinking Junkrat or Lucio would abuse the information felt cold and slick inside him. He shook his head. His hair was drying and a hank of it fell over his forehead into his eyes. 

He shoved it back. White hair, he'd gone grey early thanks to a life of work on the sea, but even given the allowance of a few hundred extra years of apparent lifespan, he'd been an old man when he'd gone into the ocean for what he'd thought was the last time. He shook himself and tried to focus. "I went to the ocean as an outlaw," Roadhog marshalled his words and sent them out, trying to make them explain what he didn't understand himself. "I didn't want that to follow me out again."

Junkrat looked up at him, studying his eyes, his face and then glancing away again. For the first time that Roadhog had ever seen, he didn't seem to be able to talk his way out of this one.

"We'll go back to Sugar Shell," Roadhog felt tired, disappointed and hollow and let down by his own stupid imagination.  _ Not like this. _ He'd thought of it though, hadn't he. He thought a few times of making the walk up the hill to Junkrat's cottage, knocking on the door and explaining everything. He'd thought of kissing Junkrat on dry land without salt on their lips and with the benefit of a bed or even a floor free of sand to make use of. "I'll go back to the water. We can go back to diving, or not. You’re not my problem if you dive elsewhere." Roadhog shook his head, and reached up to pull his mask down. But he wasn't wearing it, and there was nothing but drying hanks of his white hair to hide his face in.

He turned, and found Lucio hadn't slowed, and was a barefoot figure in the distance of the beach, walking on the haze of heat making a mirage of blue sky on the sand.

"Hog," Junkrat snapped, and suddenly, Junkrat was right there beside him, both his hands on Roadhog's arm, holding him back.

Roadhog paused and looked back at him. Junkrat was only a foot shorter than he was. He was Tall when he was standing straight. He'd always been a long figure in the water, and it wasn't just because of his fins and hair.

Junkrat studied Roadhog's face again, glanced down his chest to the nipple rings, the tattoo over his belly and down to his broken boots. Then with a visible effort, he looked back up at Roadhog's face.

"I'm your problem," Junkrat blurted. "You said so, when we met I promised you half, you said," He broke off and licked his lips and shoved on into the rapid babbling words. "You said as long as I dove on your territory I was your problem."

"Sure," Roadhog said patiently. He tried to pull his arm back but Junkrat stubbornly held onto him. "But you don't have to-."

"No," Junkrat snapped, "Say it, tell me I'm your problem."

Roadhog met Junkrat's gaze, expecting him to look away again, but this time, Junkrat set his jaw and stared back up at him. Shyness, Roadhog thought, stupidly, and shoved the thought away. Junkrat was upset and annoyed and unsettled by Roadhog showing both his human halves. He'd never been shy, even when he hadn't known Roadhog. Back when Roadhog had been some dark shape swimming circles in the dark water on Junkrat’s first dives, even when Junkrat had been skittish enough to bring Lucio with him to the tidepools. He'd never...

Junkrat was still holding onto him, looking braced and uncertain and stubborn.

"You're my problem," Roadhog said quietly, wondering what a promise like that could possibly mean.

Junkrat eased his grip and his hands slid over Roadhog's hand. "I want to keep diving on your territory," He said, "Want you to stay where I can find you in the water."

Roadhog curled his hand closed over the edge of Junkrat's hand. "And out of the water?"

It was the right thing to do, Junkrat relaxed slightly, looked down in surprise at their joined hands and then back up at Roadhog before he could think of letting him go. "Yeah. Yeah mate."

Lucio was ahead of them on the curve of the beach, still walking and they started after him, hand in hand and quiet.

"You said after,"Junkrat said quietly, "Is this what you meant?"

"Yes," Roadhog grunted quietly.

They turned around a curve in the beach, where the hill was nearly a cliff above them and looked down the stretch of the north side of the island. Lucio was talking to his three shipmates who had brought them ashore in the longboat that had been pulled up the sands. In the ocean behind them, gracefully riding a long anchor chain up the ocean swells, a huge, three masted barque shone in the sunshine. Her name was  _ Thunderer _ , and she looked like a vision to Roadhog, who even now felt the thud of homesickness and nostalgia when he saw her. She was Lucio’s second home on the water’s around Sugar Shell; the ship that had unhesitatingly sailed hard off their course all night for an unscheduled rescue at Lucio’s request.

Junkrat stopped short. The barque was well hidden, tucked in a bowl of deep water under the steep hills and cliffs of the north side of the island. She was a steel hulled cargo carrier that was familiar in the islands too small to be of interest to larger shipping. She was built seventy years ago and held together by love and endless labour. She could run perfectly silent with over twelve thousand square feet of ruthlessly maintained sail and a thoroughly well trained and eager crew. Her white hull shone and her sails were neatly gasketed and her crew were waiting on deck. They looked a happy seal colony, in sun faded tank tops and pine-tar stained shorts, lounging in the sunshine with their sunglasses on. Seeing them reminded Roadhog of how much like Lucio they were. Roadhog hadn’t known how much Lucio had given up when he’d chosen to leave the ship and live ashore. 

Junkrat laughed beside him.

"No noise," Junkrat said, a slow smile spreading over his face. " _ Thunderer _ doesn't need her engines."

Roadhog just nodded and kept his hand around Junkrat’s, “Lucky for us Lucio’s holding their whaler hostage on the roof of Mei’s bakery.”  

Junkrat snorted with laughter and together, they walked up the beach to join Lucio, and go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed. I love these boys and want them to be happy yes please.  
> Another thank you to those who read the first two chapters of this and trusted in me to post the third in a timely manor. I sheepishly present it to you two months overdue, but I hope you can forgive me. ₍₍ (ง Ŏ౪Ŏ)ว ⁾⁾ (My new job is amazing and I love it, but it will be another month before I'm not driving 2 hours a day to get to it!). Another installment of this AU is in the works, and will begin to go up in early June in case you're interested!  
> Super huge thank you to Windlion for her reassurances and advice and especially especially to moriarty for encouraging me to finish this fic and as well as beta reading it!! She's amazing and a huge part of why this chapter was finished. I am grateful. <3  
> If you have any questions or want to come say hi (please do!) [my Tumblr is here!](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com)


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